Grassland farming in Europe was already established during the settlement of the first farmers together with their domesticated animals after the last ice age. Since  then, grassland provides the forage basis to feed ruminant animals for the production of meat and milk. Depending on the ecological conditions and intensity of usage, various plant communities with different species developed, displaying a rich biodiversity. With the introduction of improved crop rotations at the end of the 16th century, grasses and legumes were also grown to an important extent as forage crops on arable land. In the last decades the importance of amenity grasses increased markedly, due to the demand of the society for new usages like landscape protection.
Around 1900 interested farmers and academics identified the need for grassland improvement through systematic selection and seed production. This marks the beginning of breeding and research in companies but also at universities and specialized research institutes. Plant collection started with many of the species that are still of importance today. The collected materials were grouped according to the intended use and some type of phenotypic selection was applied. Seed multiplication of such populations was performed in pure stands and the harvested seed
was marketed. Although the vegetative biomass and its quality are of utmost importance in forage crop breeding, it is the seed yield potential which determines the commercial success of a new variety.
There are some milestones in forage crop breeding that should be mentioned:   the invention of the polycross leading to the replacement of open pollinated varieties by synthetic varieties, progeny testing, breeding of amenity grasses, induction of tetraploids in the ryegrasses and red clover, and the introduction and application of molecular tools. The invention of the forage plot harvester, computers, NIRS, and other new technologies has led to a tremendous increase in breeding intensity. Unfortunately, public funded research is decreasing dramatically in most highly developed countries, while in the commercial sector a concentration process took place. Thus, efforts are needed to avoid loss in knowledge and breeding experience. Scientific and practical knowledge of forage plant breeding accumulated in
the first 50 years of systematic fodder crop breeding has been summarized in the so far unique volume “Züchtung der Futterpflanzen – Breeding of Forage Plants” which appeared as the fourth volume of the bilingual “Handbuch der Pflanzenzüchtung – Manual of Plant Breeding” in two editions, 1941 and 1959, and was edited by H. Kappert and W. Rudorf. In their foreword to the second edition, we can read that “the research results are scattered in profuse literature which can no longer be overlooked by the individual.” Now, another 50 years later, this is certainly true even more and we as editors of the “Fodder Crops and Amenity Grasses” volume of this new “Handbook of Plant Breeding” are proud to tackle again the challenge of making the most pertinent knowledge available to the plant breeding community