Southern African pasture and forage science entering the 21st century: past to present

Abstract

Given the global challenges of mitigating and alleviating land degradation and ensuring food security, particularly through protein production, pasture and forage science together with rangeland science will remain imperative to sustainable livestock production systems. Recognising the scientific principles developed in this discipline the past 50 years and more in Southern Africa, customary to our diverse and unique environmental conditions will continue to guide and identify future research priorities. A journey from the past to the present can assist in avoiding reinvention and repetition of pasture research. This review highlights how research priorities have either remained the same over time or where research has received less or more priority. The review further illustrates that there has been more interest in species adaptation to drought, pasture and forage water relations, alternative pasture and forage species, and the combination of pasture species in the 21st century than in the 20th century. In conclusion, the soil–plant– livestock complex can serve as a conceptual basis for more effective research together with pasture breeding and nutrition. Finally, researching pasture and forage sciences in an inter- and multi-disciplinary manner clearly supports the principles of holism applied by General JC Smuts, one of the first pioneers of pasture and forage sciences.

Keywords: alternative species, drought adaptation, forage, livestock production systems, pasture, water relations