Future directions in the molecular breeding of forage and turf

Forage and turf molecular breeding has now clearly entered the post-genomic era, with a large amount of structural genomics information and genomic resources available for key forage and turf species and relevant model systems. A primary challenge ahead is the conversion of this information into useful functional knowledge for the development of molecular breeding technologies and products. High-throughput approaches for spatial and temporal analysis and the integration of data from the related fields of genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and phenomics in a systems biology context will be critical for the establishment of stringent gene-function correlations. Translational genomics will allow for results obtained using model plant systems such as Arabidopsis thaliana, rice and Medicago truncatula to have major impact on understanding the molecular basis of plant processes and have direct application to the molecular breeding of forage and turf plants. These developments will be enhanced through applications of transgenesis and functionally associated genetic markers in forage and turf molecular breeding building on genomic and post-genomic discoveries in these target species.