Diversification and use of bioenergy to maintain future grasslands.

Grassland agriculture is experiencing a number of threats including declining profitability and loss of area to other land uses including expansion of the built environment as well as from cropland and forestry. The use of grassland as a natural resource either in terms of existing vegetation and land cover or planting of new species for bioenergy and other nonfood applications presents an opportunity, and potential solution, to maintain the broader ecosystem services that perennial grasslands provide as well as to improve the options for grassland farmers and their communities. This paper brings together different grass or grassland-based studies and considers them as part of a continuum of strategies that, when also combined with improvements in grassland production systems, will improve the overall efficiency of grasslands as an important natural resource and enable a greater area to be managed, replanted or conserved.

Flowering induction in the bioenergy grass Miscanthus sacchariflorus is a quantitative short-day response, whilst delayed flowering under long days increases biomass accumulation.

Miscanthus sacchariflorus is a fast-growing C(4) perennial grass that can naturally hybridize with M. sinensis to produce interspecific hybrids, such as the sterile triploid M.× giganteus.