What are forage grasses?
Grasses are distributed throughout the world as part of both natural and agricultural ecosystems. Grassland is a major component of the landscape in temperate regions. In Europe much of the lowland grassland is cultivated and occupied by a restricted number of species. The rye grasses, Lolium perenne and Lolium multiflorum, occupy about 70% of the agricultural areas with the Fescues and Cocksfoot making up the remainder. The Institute for Grassland and Environmental Research (IGER) is the UK centre for forage grass studies and conducts research to ensure the continued improvement of grassland farming.

Much of the present progress in forage breeding is due to selection for improvements in quantitative characters such as quality and yield. The identification and selection of superior and novel combinations of the polygenes encoding such characters is made more efficient by employing modern marker assisted selection techniques. Such techniques are also useful for other breeding programmes, for example the selection and improvement of Lolium material containing introgressed chromosome segments of Festuca pratensis. In order to facilitate these activities scientists at IGER and their international collaborators are developing genetic and physical maps of the major forage grass species.

Forage grasses and UK CropNet
The information derived from the mapping and QTL programmes being carried out by IGER and its collaboratators worldwide will be made available to the general scientific community via a database (FoggDB) developed as part of the UK Crop Plant Bioinformatics Network, of which IGER is a founder member (see below for more details about FoggDB). The development of the forage grass genome database is proceeding in parallel with data entry, with the structure being adjusted to reflect the nature of available information. The database is now available to be downloaded from the CropNet FTP site or accessed interactively through the AceBrowser interface. Click here to access FoggDB. Future plans include incorporating comparative mapping data for Lolium and Festuca, expanding the maps for the tropical grasses Brachiaria and Paspalum, and including data from the newly-established forage clover mapping programme.

FoggDB
FoggDB is a database funded by the BBSRC UK CropNet project, for the storage of genetic mapping data pertaining to the temperate forage grasses, Lolium Perenne, Lolium multiflorum and Festuca Pratensis.

The data currently available in the database is outlined below:

• Details of 3 forage grass species, L. perenne, L. multiflorum and F. pratensis and references to other grass species.
• Details of around 200 loci mapped within the named species.
• 15 genetic maps:
  8 from mapping Family 1, (L. perenne x L. multiflorum x doubled-haploid L. perenne).
  7 from linkage groups belonging to two 'green gene' mapping families.
• Details of genetic crosses.
• Sequence data from within these species.
• Phenotypic data.
• Bibliographic data of relevance to forage grass genetic mapping.

• Mapping of Family 2, (L. perenne x dihaploid L. perenne) in collaboration with a number of international institu tes.
• The physical mapping of Lolium/Festuca introgression lines;
• Mapping data from the water-soluble carbohydrate family.
• 'Green gene' family mapping.

Autoradiogram, gel and chromosomal image data will also be added as it becomes available.