Forage crops are the cornerstone of grassland livestock production and play vital ecological roles in carbon sequestration, habitat maintenance, and biodiversity conservation. However, most forage species are perennial and often self-incompatible, characterized by highly heterozygous, repeat-rich, and frequently polyploid genomes. Consequently, fundamental biological research and molecular breeding in forages have substantially lagged behind major cereal and food crops. Compounded by global climate change, the increasing frequency of extreme temperatures, drought, and soil salinization poses severe threats to forage productivity and stability. To accelerate breeding programs and support sustainable grassland agriculture, it is imperative to systematically integrate multi-omics and phenomics to dissect the genetic architecture of complex agronomic and adaptive traits, including stress resilience, biomass, and forage quality, thereby enabling the efficient development of elite, stress-tolerant forage varieties.

This Special Issue aims to present cutting-edge, multidisciplinary research advances in forage science. A primary objective is to publish original research and innovative methodologies that leverage multi-omics and phenomics to address critical challenges in improving stress resistance, biomass, and nutritional quality. By doing so, this collection seeks to provide a scientific foundation for sustainable grassland agriculture in the face of global climate change.

This Collection welcomes submissions focusing on the integration and optimization of multi-omics approaches in forage research, including but not limited to:

 ●    Systematic integration of multi-omics technologies (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and epigenomics) to identify causal genes and dissect complex regulatory networks governing forage biomass, quality, and responses to abiotic stresses (e.g., drought, salinity, extreme temperatures, and heavy metal toxicity).

 ●    Development of novel omics analysis methods and integrated pipelines, with an emphasis on advancing causal gene identification, mechanistic insights, and the characterization of regulatory networks associated with forage resilience and yield.

 ●    Exploration of effective strategies for leveraging multi-omics data to accelerate the molecular breeding and selection of stress-resilient, high-biomass, and high-quality forage cultivars.

Guest Editors

Prof. Dr. Liang Chen, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
His research interests focus on (1) Molecular genetic mechanisms of plant stress tolerance; (2) Germplasm innovation for stress-tolerant turfgrasses and forage crops.

Prof. Dr. Longxing Hu, Hunan Agricultural University, China
His research interests focus on (1) Germplasm innovation and molecular breeding of grain amaranth, alfalfa, and pennisetum; (2) Molecular mechanisms of forage yield and quality formation, and stress resistance.

Prof. Dr. Yu Chen, Nanjing Agricultural University, China
His research interests focus on molecular biology of stress tolerance in grasses.

Submission Deadline

The deadline for manuscript submission is 31 December, 2026. However, we can accommodate extensions on a case-by-case basis. All papers will be published as open access articles upon acceptance.

Submission Instructions

Please submit the full manuscript to Grass Research via our Online Submission System. All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors for submission of manuscripts is available on the For Authors page.

Additionally, please choose the topic of this Special Issue when submitting and specify it in your cover letter. For further inquiries, please contact Guest Editors:

Prof. Dr. Liang Chen (chenliang888@wbgcas.cn)
Prof. Dr. Longxing Hu (grass@hunau.edu.cn)
Prof. Dr. Yu Chen (cyu801027@njau.edu.cn)