Why Europe's seed sector is investing in a grass that thrives in drought, feeds livestock, and is redefining professional turf.
Why It Matters
Fescue is an outstanding grass relied upon for critical livestock grazing, but it is also gaining ground on professional sports fields, already edging out ryegrass in some parts of Europe. Here is a progress report on breeding efforts -- with a surprising twist still to come.
If you look out over a pasture or a professional sports field today, you may well be seeing a cutting-edge variety of fescue. This grass is in high demand across Europe, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, South America, and beyond. Commercial varieties already combine durability -- withstanding continuous grazing or close mowing -- with drought tolerance and resistance to crown rust. For livestock systems, modern fescue is more digestible, palatable, and higher yielding than ever before.
Yet improvement does not stop here. To explore today's breeding progress and tomorrow's potential, Seed World Europespoke with several breeders at leading international companies. We discussed the challenges of producing better varieties, how new technologies are being integrated, germplasm availability, and much more.
Fescue Species and Breeding Focus
While the Festuca genus contains hundreds of species -- perhaps as many as 640 -- only a handful are the focus of active breeding programmes.
At DLF, forage breeding concentrates on F. pratensis (meadow fescue), while turf breeding targets mainly three species: F. rubra (red fescue), F. ovina (sheep fescue), and F. trachyphylla (hard fescue). In addition, F. arundinacea (tall fescue) is bred for both forage and turf applications.
Etienne Abelard, DLF's fescue breeder in France, notes a growing interest over the past five to seven years in using hard and sheep fescue on sports fields due to their resilience and tolerance to low-input management. "We already see tall fescue being taken up by turf professionals in northern European countries, where perennial ryegrass is otherwise the preferred turf species," he says. "With warmer and drier climates, there will be an increased need for fescue turfs as well as forages."
DSV breeder Yannick Quitté agrees, emphasising that tall fescue has gained importance in Northern Europe because of increasingly dry conditions. In these environments, tall fescue outperforms perennial ryegrass and other species. DSV's turf portfolio includes tall fescue, red fescues (both slender creeping and creeping types), chewing fescue (a red fescue subspecies), hard fescue, and sheep fescue. "Meadow fescue grows better than other species, even at low temperatures," Quitté says. "It tolerates cutting better than grazing and is ideal for combining with forage legumes."
Tall fescue, by contrast, is highly adaptable to both wet and dry conditions, making it suitable for sites that experience seasonal variability.
"Its deep rooting system allows it to access water reserves deeper in the soil, enabling survival through dry periods," Quitté explains. "It is also characterised by good winter hardiness and vigour. Climate adaptation varies, however: there are temperate, winter-dormant varieties, as well as Mediterranean, summer-dormant types."
Leaf texture is another consideration. Cattle tend to avoid rough-leaved tall fescue, prompting breeders to develop softer-leaved lines. Quitté notes, however, that soft leaves do not automatically equate to higher forage quality. At Barenbrug, turf breeding targets the same species, while forage breeding primarily focuses on tall fescue (including Mediterranean types) and meadow fescue. DSV's forage programme likewise concentrates on tall and meadow fescue.
Breeding Timelines and Targets
Developing a new fescue variety is a long-term endeavour. Depending on the species and intended use, the process typically takes 10 to 18 years. Breeders continuously align development with market needs through direct feedback from end-users, farmer organisations, disease surveys, and other monitoring mechanisms.
At Barenbrug, forage breeder Gilles Labarneix highlights the main breeding targets: forage and seed yield, nutritional quality (including leaf softness to ensure livestock consumption), and resistance to both biotic and abiotic stress. "Quality is the main challenge," Labarneix explains, "but it has improved substantially over the last few years." Barenbrug's turf breeder, Stéphane Charrier, has similar objectives but adds salt tolerance as a priority, reflecting the increasing use of recycled water in turf management.
DLF's breeding goals vary by species and use. For tall fescue forage, targets include yield, leaf softness, overall quality, and drought tolerance; for meadow fescue, the emphasis is mainly on yield and quality. In turf varieties -- including tall, red, sheep, and hard fescues -- goals encompass visual merit, leaf fineness, disease resistance, colour, and wear tolerance. Salt tolerance is also specifically addressed in red, sheep, and hard fescues.
DSV's approach in tall fescue forage breeding prioritises forage and seed yield, black rust resistance, leaf softness, feeding value (especially digestibility), density, winter growth, and summer persistence. In meadow fescue, breeders additionally focus on resistance to black rust, crown rust, and leaf spots, along with winter hardiness, feeding value, and ground cover.
Breeding Methods
Barbara Hinds-Cook, a DLF breeder in Washington State, U.S., explains that all Festuca species are bred like other out-crossing grasses, either through half-sib open pollination or full-sib controlled pollination, followed by careful selection of the offspring.
At DSV, tetraploid meadow fescue varieties are developed via colchicine treatment. Barenbrug employs extensive Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) analyses to assess crop quality and select superior lines.
Labarneix emphasises that Festuca's perennity and natural abiotic resistance make it relatively easier to breed compared with other grasses.
Hinds-Cook adds that most Festuca species flower two to three weeks earlier than other grasses, requiring early assessment of parental material in the spring.
Compared with forage perennial ryegrass, tall fescue is a hexaploid, meaning genomic selection tools, widely used in ryegrass, are not yet fully applicable.
Quitté notes that the development of tetraploid meadow fescue varieties in recent years has helped improve forage quality and facilitated breeding progress.
Yield and Seed Production
Accurate measurement of yield is a cornerstone of fescue breeding. At Barenbrug, Festuca yield is primarily measured using a Haldrup cutting machine, which allows precise assessments of forage performance.
At DLF, combines equipped with Near-Infrared (NIR) cameras are used to measure both fresh and dry matter directly in the field. "NIR data are later used to predict forage quality parameters," explains Sabrina Rasmussen, DLF's fescue breeder in Denmark. "We see potential for combining NIR with machine learning to push beyond the typical annual yield gains of 0.2%-0.3% in grass crops."
Seed production, however, faces additional challenges, particularly due to EU regulatory changes. Over the past decade, political agendas have limited the use of certain chemical plant protection products, historically employed to ensure high-quality seed certification. This creates difficulties in regions where weed populations are building up. "At the end-user level, the removal of crop protection primarily affects professional turf managers, who often have limited tools to combat disease outbreaks," Rasmussen notes.
Charrier adds that with the decreasing number of herbicides available to seed growers, producing seed at a high level of quality and purity has become increasingly challenging. "New crop management techniques are being trialled to counterbalance these issues."
These pressures underscore the importance of integrating breeding, agronomic practices, and technological monitoring to maintain both yield and quality in modern Festuca varieties.
Uniformity and Other Challenges
DLF, Barenbrug, and DSV rely primarily on their own breeding material but also incorporate competitors' varieties, wild collections, and genebank accessions. Regarding germplasm availability, the companies emphasise that the ITPGRFA Annex 1 list supersedes the requirements of the Nagoya Protocol, enabling the collection of wild Festuca species.
Festuca's wide genetic diversity, while a valuable resource, presents challenges for meeting Distinctness, Uniformity and Stability (DUS) requirements. Abelard notes that uniformity is particularly difficult to achieve. "Uniformity in Festuca is heavily influenced by weather conditions. This has become increasingly apparent in recent years, with atypical winter and spring conditions observed across Europe."
Quitté adds that despite high genetic variability, careful observation and selection help maintain uniformity.
"For uniformity and stability, we combine plants with similar phenotypes for key DUS traits -- such as heading date, plant height, and leaf size -- into a synthetic variety. Multiplications are then checked for uniformity, and off-types are selected against if necessary."
Labarneix highlights that Festuca's self-incompatibility complicates achieving homogeneity, but it also facilitates plant crosses and creates selection diversity for traits like drought and disease tolerance.
Endophytes
In 1981, breeders discovered that tall fescue could host an endophyte producing ergot alkaloids toxic to livestock. Since then, many varieties have been developed to be endophyte-free, according to Oregon State University's Forage Information System.
The discovery of endophytes has also opened opportunities for beneficial applications. From 1996 to 2005, cultivar development included the advent of novel, nontoxic endophytes. Researchers at the University of Georgia (UGA) report that some U.S. tall fescue varieties now carry an endophyte, Epichloë coenophiala, which provides pest resistance, drought tolerance, and grazing resilience without the ergot alkaloids produced by the wild type. UGA scientists are also working to develop a novel endophyte-containing variety of fall fescue adapted to regional growing conditions.
"By investigating the mechanisms of Epichloë endophytes and simultaneously breeding hardier tall fescue, we aim to combine the two approaches to create superior cultivars," the researchers report.
Climate and Disease
Breeding for climate resilience has become essential. "Stronger fluctuations in weather increase the importance of robustness," says Yannick Quitté. "We are incorporating more genetic resources to select for drought and heat tolerance."
Barenbrug employs a range of tools to support drought-resistance phenotyping. "In turf, water shortage is a major issue," explains Charrier. "We use rain-out shelters and maintain a breeding station in southern France, where summer temperatures are very high, enabling us to select material capable of coping with heat."
At DLF, Hinds-Cook notes that over the past eight years, breeding teams have focused on screening for deeper root growth, both to improve spring drought tolerance and to enhance carbon sequestration. Several lines with significantly deeper root systems have been identified and are advancing through the breeding pipeline. Heat tolerance in Festuca is generally passively inherited, according to Hinds-Cook. However, these traits are not sufficiently recognised in European official testing systems, meaning breeders must continue to prioritise classical traits used in official variety rankings.
Climate change, combined with EU political pressures to reduce pesticide use, has also facilitated the emergence of new diseases, further highlighting the need for improved disease resistance in modern varieties.
For forage Festuca, crown rust remains the primary concern, and all varieties must demonstrate good resistance to gain registration. Turf varieties face additional challenges: Fusarium, brown patch (Rhizoctonia), and stem rust for seed production. Rasmussen at DLF notes that red thread is a well-known fungal disease of fescue, and milder winters have recently allowed grey leaf spot to appear in Europe. Quitté identifies crown rust and black rust as primary seed-production concerns in tall fescue, with Drechslera leaf spot occasionally problematic. Meadow fescue faces similar threats, although leaf spots such as Rhynchosporium and Drechslera occur only sporadically.
Festuca's Future
In the seed sector today, there is considerable discussion around New Breeding Techniques (NBTs). For fescue, however, solutions to upcoming challenges are expected to come primarily from a combination of current molecular tools and traditional plant breeding.
"We are exploring genomic tools," explains Charrier, "but for the near future, classical breeding remains the most efficient way to improve Festuca."
Quitté adds that molecular markers could be employed for marker-assisted selection and genetic distance assessment. Hinds-Cook highlights another challenge: "All fescue varieties are composed of multiple parental genotypes. NBT-induced mutations would need to be integrated into every background genotype of a variety to avoid diluting their impact."
Looking ahead, part of fescue's future may lie beyond conventional breeding in 'supergrasses', which are hybrids with only partial fescue genetics. Naturally occurring hybrids between Festuca and ryegrass species, known as Festulolium, are already entering the market. The specific taxonomic designation of each variety indicates its parental species.
"These hybrids combine the resilience and deep rooting of fescues with the superior growth and quality of ryegrass," says Rasmussen. "Given climate change, it is likely that their use will expand substantially in the future."