中文摘要：

牧草在家畜业、环境保护和土壤保持方面都有重要的作用。因此，它比其他的农作物有较高的经济价值。由于牧草种类的复杂性和传统牧草育种遇到的困难，现在人们已经认识到生物技术手段在发展改良牧草品种中的巨大潜力。近来我国在应用生物技术进行牧草遗传改良方面已经取得了许多成就，这为遗传育种的成功提供了有效的策略。本文就近年来生物技术在牧草遗传改良方面研究进展及其应用进行全面的综述，内容包括组织培养、细胞工程、分子标记、基因工程和遗传转化系统；提出了目前我国牧草生物技术研究中亟待解决的一些问题和进一步发展方向，如提高牧草的抗性和品质，建立高效的转化系统，功能基因克隆，转基因牧草风险评价等。

英文摘要：

Forage grasses are critical to livestock industries and important in environmental protection and soil conservation. Accordingly, they have higher economic values compared with other crop species. Due to the great complexity of forage species and the associated difficulties encountered by traditional breeding methods, the potential of biotechnology for the development of improved forage cultivars has been recognized. Recently, great progresses have been made in biotechnology for forage genetic improvement in China, which provides effective strategies to complement genetic breeding efforts. This review summarizes the recent developments and research progresses in the biotechnology and its applications for the improvement of forage in China including tissue culture, cell engineering, molecular marker, genetic engineering, and genetic transformation system. The authors finally bring forward the possible advancement direction of biotechnology research of forage breeding, sueh as improvement of quality and resistance, establishment of efficient transformation system, functional gene cloning, and risk assessment of transgenic forage, etc.