Grassland produces feed for livestock,  maintains soil fertility, protects and conserves soil and water resources, creates a habitat for wildlife, and provides recreational spaces for sports and leisure while simultaneously maintaining sustainable economic outputs. Turf species similarly contribute considerably to our environment by adding beauty to surroundings, providing a safe playing surface for sports and recreation, and preventing erosion.  In addition to food and environment, bio-energy is a global concern related  to these species. Renewable biomass energy is increasingly being accepted as a possible alternative to fossil fuels and some forages are promising for energy crops. 
Breeding programs in forages have produced improvements in both forage yield and quality. Forage and turf in the future must utilize resources (nutrients and water) more efficiently and must also confer measurable benefits in terms of environmental quality and renewable energy. With a widening range of traits, techniques for more accurate, rapid and noninvasive phenotyping and genotyping become increasingly important. The large amounts of data involved require good bioinfomatics support. Data of various kinds must be integrated from an increasingly wide range of 
sources such as genetic resources and mapping information for plant populations through to the transcriptome and metabolome of individual tissues. 
The merging of data from disparate sources and multivariate data-mining across datasets can reveal novel information concerning the biology of complex. Previous International Symposium on the Molecular Breeding of Forage and Turf (MBFT) Symposia were held in Japan in 1998, Australia in 2000, the USA in 2003 and the UK in 2005. On this occasion the 5th MBFT was held in Sapporo, Japan in 2007. The 5th MBFT was hosted by the Hokkaido 
University in cooperation with the National Agricultural Research Center for Hokkaido Region and the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization. 
Attendees included breeders, geneticists, molecular biologists, agronomists and biochemists from 19 countries. The program featured plenary addresses from leading international speakers, selected oral presentations, volunteered poster presentations, as well as tours of the National Agricultural Research Center for Hokkaido Region, Rakuno Gakuen University and Sapporo Dome. 
This book includes papers from the plenary lectures and selected oral presentations of the Conference. A wide variety of themes are included and a collection of authoritative reports provided on the recent progress and understanding of molecular technologies and their application in plant breeding. Almost all relevant areas in molecular breeding of forage and turf, from gene discovery to the development of improved cultivars, are discussed in the proceedings. 
The 5th MBFT and the publication of this book, Molecular Breeding of Forage and Turf, have been supported by National Agricultural Research Center for Hokkaido Region; National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science; Sustainability Governance Project, Hokkaido University; Alumni Association, Faculty of Agriculture, Hokkaido University; Japan Grassland Agriculture and Forage Seed Association; Japan Livestock Technology Association; Green Techno Bank; The Akiyama Foundation; The Kajima Foundation; Japan Plant Science Foundation; Novartis Foundation Japan for the Promotion of Science; Life Science Foundation of Japan; Supporting Organization for Research of Agricultural and Life Science (SORALS); The Kao Foundation for Arts and Sciences; The Suginome Memorial Foundation; Sapporo International Communication Plaza Foundation; Hokuren Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives; Snow Brand Seed Co., Ltd.; Toyota Motor Corporation; Monsanto Company; Syngenta Seeds K.K.; 
Japan Turfgrass II; Nippon Medical & Chemical Instruments Co., Ltd.; Applied Biosystems Japan Ltd.; Nihon SiberHegner Co., Ltd.; Nikon Instech Co., Ltd.; HUB Co., Ltd.; Mutoh Co., Ltd.; Imuno Science Co., Ltd. 
We thank Mervyn Humpherys, German Spangenberg, Reed Barker, Andy Hopkins, Odd Arne Rognli, Hitoshi Nakagawa of the International Organizing Committee, as well as Toshinori Komatsu, Yoshio Sano, Yoh 
Horikawa, Hajime Araki, Akira Kanazawa, Toshiyuki Hirata, Yoshihiro Okamoto, Kazuhiro Tase, Kenji Okumura, Sachiko Isobe, Hiroyuki Tamaki, Ryo Akashi, Masayuki Yamashita, Yoshiaki Nagamura, Tadashi Takamizo, 
Makoto Kobayashi, Masumi Ebina, Makoto Yaneshita, of the Local Organizing Committee for their contributions to the success of the Conference. We also thanks following scientists for their critical reviewing of the manuscripts of this book: Michael Abberton, Toshio Aoki, Ian Armstead, Reed Barker, Philippe Barre, Susanne Barth, Faith Belanger, Yves Castonguay, Hiroyuki Enoki, Sachiko Isobe, Bryan Kindiger, Takako Kiyoshi, Sohei Kobayashi, Steven Larson, Dariusz Malinowski, Maria Monteros, Kenji Okumura, Juan Pablo Ortiz, Mark Robbins, Odd Arne Rognli, Isabel Roldan-Ruiz, Malay Saha, Christopher Schardl, Leif Skøt, Satoshi Tabata, Tadashi Takamizo, Hiroyuki Tamaki, Ken-ichi Tamura, Scott Warnke, Yan Zhang. We thank Jinnie Kim and Jillian Slaight of Springer for their assistance and cooperation in the publication of this book. Finally, we express our gratitude to the authors whose dedication and work made this book possible.