History of Grass Breeding for Grazing Lands in the Northern Great Plains of the USA and Canada

Abstract

In the early 1930s there were millions of acres of extensively degraded grazing lands and abandoned and eroded cropland in the Northern Plains of the United States and Canada. Grass breeding and plant materials programs were established by both the US and Canadian governments and cooperating universities to develop revegetation materials. Efforts of a small number of research locations and people resulted in grass cultivars or varieties that were used to revegetate and preserve the soil on millions of acres of land. This is a brief history of the people, agencies, and universities that developed these cultivars that restored and increased the productivity of grasslands in the Northern Plains.