Abstract:
Given the global challenges of mitigating and alleviating land degradation and ensuring food security, particularly
through protein production, pasture and forage science together with rangeland science will remain imperative to
sustainable livestock production systems. Recognising the scientific principles developed in this discipline the past
50 years and more in Southern Africa, customary to our diverse and unique environmental conditions will continue to
guide and identify future research priorities. A journey from the past to the present can assist in avoiding reinvention
and repetition of pasture research. This review highlights how research priorities have either remained the same over
time or where research has received less or more priority. The review further illustrates that there has been more
interest in species adaptation to drought, pasture and forage water relations, alternative pasture and forage species,
and the combination of pasture species in the 21st century than in the 20th century. In conclusion, the soil–plant–
livestock complex can serve as a conceptual basis for more effective research together with pasture breeding and
nutrition. Finally, researching pasture and forage sciences in an inter- and multi-disciplinary manner clearly supports
the principles of holism applied by General JC Smuts, one of the first pioneers of pasture and forage sciences.
