ABSTRACT

Drought stress is one of the most important constraints on agricultural protability and sustainability worldwide. Crops with high-use efciency of limiting resources including water are critical to producer success. Forage crops can produce high net biomass per unit area with minimum inputs because of their low requirements of fertilizers, herbicides, and land preparation (Islam et al., 2011). Forages allow producers to harvest important commodities, like ber and animal feed, and even biomass for biofuel, from marginal lands that would otherwise be incapable of high productivity.