The Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in its Resolution On Measures for the Further Development of Soviet Agriculture, pointed out that the most rapid increase in livestock production, and above all in publicly owned livestock husbandry, is of exceptionally great importance to the state and constitutes the most urgent task currently facing the Party and the Government in the sphere of agriculture. This task can be successfully accomplished only through the establishment of a stable fodder base capable of supplying all types of feed required by livestock husbandry. Forage production includes obtaining feed from natural forage lands (hay and green fodder from natural hayfields and pastures), as well as the production of feed within forage and field crop rotation systems, namely: succulent feeds (root crops, potatoes, silage crops, and forage melons), grain feeds (oats, barley, etc.), coarse feeds from field crops (straw and chaff), and hay and green fodder from rotation grasslands. It thus becomes evident that the principal source of livestock feed is the plant world, and the study of plants constitutes the subject matter of a science known as botany. Soviet botanists study the life of plants and apply the achievements of this science to the national economy. Therefore, botany, as the science of plants and as the theoretical foundation of all branches of crop cultivation, contributes to the development of forage production and to the establishment of a stable fodder base. Thus, a direct connection is established between botany and forage production. Biology is the science that studies the laws governing the origin and development of living nature. It investigates nature in its eternal movement and change. It studies the laws of development of the diverse living world, from the simplest to the most complex organisms. Until the eighteenth century, the metaphysical view of nature dominated. According to this view, the entire world was immutable and had been created at one moment. “According to this conception, nature, regardless of how it arose, once it existed remained unchanged throughout its existence... Species of plants and animals were fixed once and for all at the moment of their origin, and each species invariably gave rise only to its own kind...” At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Lamarck proposed the theory of evolution, which was subsequently further developed and comprehensively substantiated in the works of Darwin. It has been established that all living organisms on Earth descended from the simplest forms of life through a development lasting millions of years. In his works, Lamarck emphasized the enormous influence of the external environment upon the development of organisms. Darwin revealed the universal variability underlying this development and demonstrated how useful variations accumulate through natural selection and become fixed in successive generations. The works of Lamarck and Darwin received enthusiastic support from Russian scientists. They developed Darwinian theory further, eliminated its errors, and laid the foundations of scientific biology. The founder of Soviet biological science, I. V. Michurin, further developed the experimental principles established by Lamarck and Darwin and revealed the laws governing the development of living organisms. Academician Lysenko continued this doctrine and created the theory of the stage development of plants. The Michurin school’s new understanding of the laws of organismal development made it possible to alter the nature of plants, thereby transforming Darwin’s theory from a doctrine explaining the organic world into a doctrine for transforming it. Michurinist Soviet biology is a materialist doctrine of living nature founded upon the only scientific worldview, dialectical materialism. Biology comprises a number of disciplines: zoology, which studies animal organisms; botany, which studies plants; and microbiology, which studies the microscopic world of living organisms. With the development of microbiology, plant anatomy, plant physiology, and other sciences during the nineteenth century, it became clear that there exists no sharp boundary between plants and animals and that plants, like animals, are living organisms. From that time onward, botany came to be regarded as a branch of biology, the science of living organisms. A natural question arises: wherein lie the similarities and differences between plants and animals? The common features of plant and animal organisms consist in their cellular structure (which is built from the same chemical substances) and in the continuous process of respiration taking place in living cells. Growth and the extremely limited capacity for movement possessed by plant organisms are characteristics shared by both plants and animals. It is often difficult to draw a strict line between certain protozoa, plant organisms, and animal organisms. This confirms the common origin of all living beings. For example, some animals, such as sponges, hydroids, and corals, remain attached to one place throughout their entire lives, resembling plants. At the same time, certain lower plants, such as algae, are capable of constant active movement. Certain groups of plants, like animals, feed on ready-made organic substances. These include insectivorous plants, parasitic plants that live on other plants and utilize their nutrients, and saprophytic plants that inhabit dead organic remains and feed upon the products of their decomposition. However, plants that feed on ready-made organic compounds are exceptions. The fundamental distinction between plants and animals lies precisely in their mode of nutrition. Plants are able, with the aid of chlorophyll and light, to manufacture the nutrients necessary for their existence. Part of these substances is used to build new tissues and organs, while another part is stored. Animals feed on the organic food produced by plants and cannot survive without it. In order to make better use of sunlight and carbon dioxide, green plants possess leaves. To absorb water and mineral salts from the soil, plants have highly developed root systems. Animals, in their search for ready-made organic food, developed the ability to move; consequently, their bodies became more flexible and mobile. Thus, differences in nutrition led to increasingly pronounced divergence between originally related groups and produced the distinctive features characteristic of plants and animals today. The plant kingdom is immense and diverse. Trees, herbaceous plants, and cultivated crops cover vast territories. Vegetation exists not only on land but also in fresh waters and in the depths of the oceans. The great significance of the plant kingdom lies first of all in the fact that plants, with the exception of a few non-green forms, enrich the atmosphere with oxygen. Respiration in the overwhelming majority of plant and animal organisms requires oxygen; without oxygen they perish rapidly. Yet the atmosphere contains only about 20 percent free oxygen. The remainder consists of other gases: nitrogen (78 percent), carbon dioxide (0.03 percent), argon (about 1 percent), and others. Because of respiration, combustion, and related processes occurring within the Earth’s crust, free oxygen is constantly being bound, and the oxygen content of the atmosphere would steadily decline if there were no source replenishing its reserves. Such a source is provided by green plants. Within the green leaves of plants occurs one of the most remarkable phenomena in nature, namely photosynthesis. During photosynthesis, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or water enters the green cells of plants, while oxygen is released from them. At the same time, sugars, starches, and other carbohydrates are produced in the green parts of plants. These substances constitute the basic food of the plant itself. In addition, plants require proteins, fats, and other substances. These are formed from compounds containing nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and other elements absorbed by plants from the soil. Thus, plants create organic substances from inorganic materials and water, and these organic substances are used as food by plants themselves, animals, and human beings. For example, by sowing approximately 0.3 tons of sugar-beet seed on one hectare of land, more than 100 centners of pure sugar may be obtained under advanced cultivation conditions. Fields planted with rye, wheat, and other cereal crops produce enormous quantities of food. The total world production of major grain crops and certain forage crops (wheat, maize, rye, rice, oats, barley, etc.) exceeds 500 million tons. In the Soviet Union, grain production exceeds 100 million tons. Large quantities of vegetables are also grown. Foremost among them is the potato, amounting to about 200 million tons worldwide, of which roughly 100 million tons are produced in the Soviet Union. Various root crops and melons serve not only as food for humans but also as feed for livestock. Hayfields and pastures provide livestock with many valuable fodder products, including hay and green forage. In addition to supplying food for humans and feed for animals, plants also provide building materials and raw materials for industrial products, including rubber, paper, fibers, alcohol, dyes, medicines, various ethers, vitamins, and many other substances. Finally, green plants accumulate energy resources for industry and transportation. Coal, petroleum, and peat are all products of plant origin. Such is the enormous role of plants in nature and in the national economy. Botany is the science that studies the life, structure, growth, and development of plants. It is divided into the following principal branches: morphology, anatomy, physiology, plant taxonomy, plant geography, ecology, and geobotany. Morphology studies the form and external structure of plants, the arrangement of their organs, and their various modifications. Taxonomy is concerned with the classification of plants, the construction of a systematic arrangement of the plant kingdom, and the description of individual plant species. Plant Anatomy investigates the microscopic structure of plants, including plant cells, tissues, their origin, and development. Plant Physiology studies the life processes occurring within plants: nutrition, metabolism, growth, and development. At the end of the nineteenth century, microbiology separated from botany as an independent science devoted to the study of microscopic organisms, especially bacteria. Later, genetics also became an independent discipline, investigating heredity and variation in plants and forming the basis of plant breeding. Plant Geography studies the distribution of plants on the Earth and determines the distribution of individual species and plant groups both in the present and in the past. Plant Ecology studies the laws governing the relationships between plants and their environment, including their habitats. Geobotany, as the science of plant communities, investigates the interactions between vegetation and environmental conditions. Botany, as a broad science embracing numerous disciplines, did not emerge all at once. More than three hundred years before our era, the Greek physician Hippocrates was the first to describe plants. He listed about two hundred plants used in medicine. Somewhat later, the Greek philosopher Aristotle and his pupil Theophrastus attempted to collect and systematize accumulated botanical knowledge. Theophrastus described approximately five hundred plants in his works, devoting considerable attention to cultivated plants of agricultural importance. He divided all plants into trees, shrubs, and herbs. Because the knowledge contained in his writings was exceptionally comprehensive and diverse for his time, Theophrastus is often referred to as the “Father of Botany.” During the subsequent centuries, up to the sixteenth century, no major advances were made in plant studies. Authors of botanical works blindly revered the authority of Aristotle and Theophrastus. In the sixteenth century, with the development of trade and navigation, new plant species were discovered. From that time onward, botany began to develop steadily, although for a long period it remained largely a descriptive science devoted to collecting facts and recording plant characteristics. Individual scholars attempted to organize scattered descriptions of plants according to particular characteristics. A turning point in the history of botany came with the work of the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus in the eighteenth century. Linnaeus is regarded as the founder of modern plant taxonomy. He organized a vast amount of scattered botanical information, created a system for the classification of genera and species, introduced as many as one thousand morphological terms, and described approximately ten thousand plant species. However, Linnaeus adhered to the then-dominant but erroneous belief in the immutability of species. In his Philosophia Botanica he wrote: “Just as many species exist, so many were created by the Almighty at the beginning of the world...” Linnaeus’s belief in the fixed and unchanging nature of species already provoked dissatisfaction among many scientists of his time. The first scientist who attempted to explain the origin of organic forms from an evolutionary perspective was Lamarck. In his work Philosophie Zoologique (1800), he argued that species undergo constant change and that the cause of such change lies in external conditions to which organisms are compelled to adapt. However, Lamarck failed to solve many important problems, including the diversity of organic forms, their apparent purposiveness, and the perfection of biological structures. In reality, the problem of evolution had merely been posed, not solved. If Lamarck attempted to provide the first systematic explanation of the evolution of the animal kingdom at the beginning of the nineteenth century, then the Russian scientist P. F. Goryaninov produced one of the earliest evolutionary systems for the plant kingdom in 1834. Goryaninov was a precursor of Darwin. In 1834 he clearly formulated the principles of organic evolution, studied the relationships among different plant species, and arranged them into a system reflecting the developmental process of the organic world. The theory of evolution created by Charles Darwin produced a genuine revolution in the prevailing metaphysical views of life and nature. Darwin refuted the dominant doctrine of the permanence of species through his materialist teaching. He established the natural laws according to which life on Earth changes and develops and created an evolutionary theory explaining the origin of biological adaptation. Darwin’s theory was subjected to severe attacks by certain bourgeois scientists because it dealt a powerful blow to idealistic conceptions of the world. Progressive thinkers of the time enthusiastically welcomed the theory. It provided them with a powerful weapon in the struggle against all forms of idealism and reactionary ideology. Yet Darwin’s theory contained certain errors. These were manifested in his attempt to base parts of his theory on the conclusions of Malthus’s population doctrine and in his underestimation of the role of the environment in biological variation. His famous statement, “Nature does not make leaps,” reflected an insufficiently dialectical understanding of the developmental process. Nevertheless, Darwin’s theory possessed immense significance. In Russia, Darwinism was received with great interest and rapidly gained wide acceptance. According to the historian of Darwinism M. A. Antonovich, unlike in Western Europe, in Russia “scientists greeted the new theory with sincere sympathy, receiving it as a welcome and, in a sense, long-awaited guest.” This occurred because, from the middle of the eighteenth century to the first half of the nineteenth century, Russian scientists had advanced further in the study of evolutionary problems than the majority of their Western European colleagues. In their writings they formulated many ideas that later became fundamental elements of evolutionary theory. Among these were concepts concerning the origin of the organic world from inorganic matter, the unity of origin and kinship of living organisms, and the evolutionary significance of external environmental conditions. Such scientists as Lomonosov, Lepekhin, Kaverzin, Goryaninov, Beketov, and Severtsov contributed substantially to the foundations of evolutionary thought, although none succeeded in constructing a complete evolutionary theory. The great achievement of these Russian evolutionary thinkers, who preceded Darwin, was that they prepared favorable conditions not only for the rapid dissemination of Darwinism in Russia but also for its later successful development. Russian scientists such as A. N. Beketov, the Kovalevsky brothers (A. O. and V. O.), I. I. Mechnikov, I. M. Sechenov, N. A. Severtsov, and A. P. Bogdanov became active advocates and followers of Darwin’s teachings. While further developing the foundations of materialist science, Russian botanists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made a series of important discoveries. For example, I. D. Chistyakov discovered indirect nuclear division (mitosis), I. N. Gorozhankin investigated meiotic division of the cell nucleus, and S. G. Navashin discovered double fertilization in flowering plants. Among the early Darwinists, the great Russian scientist and scientific revolutionary K. A. Timiryazev occupied a special place. During more than half a century of his life, he popularized and creatively developed Darwin’s theory. He not only demonstrated the correctness of Darwinism but also provided its proper philosophical interpretation and factual foundation. Timiryazev illustrated the power of variation, heredity, and natural selection through vivid examples drawn from the life of plants. The role of Soviet scientists in establishing the foundations of genuinely scientific biology and botany was exceptionally great. The great transformer of nature, I. V. Michurin, and his successor T. D. Lysenko transformed Darwinian theory into a rigorous science, advanced a fundamentally new materialist doctrine of heredity, revealed the causes of biological variation, and thereby opened the way to the transformation of the nature of plants and animals. They argued that environmental conditions play the decisive role in development, thereby introducing the principles of dialectical materialism into biology and correcting what they regarded as a number of Darwin’s errors and departures from materialism. Michurin and Lysenko revealed the laws of individual development in organisms, emphasized the decisive role of acquired characteristics in species formation, and scientifically substantiated the problem of relationships among organisms within a species, thereby laying the foundation for the controlled development of entire biological populations. Soviet agrobiological science, founded by Michurin and Williams and developed by Academician Lysenko, applied the method of dialectical materialism to reveal the laws governing the development of living nature. By applying Michurin’s doctrine of the transformation of living nature, it opened broad prospects for solving the fundamental problems of crop cultivation and livestock husbandry. Michurin’s theory of vegetative hybrids refuted the reactionary chromosome theory of heredity, which constituted the theoretical foundation of modern Weismannism. Lysenko’s theory of the stage development of plants greatly strengthened the priority of Russian scientists in the fields of biology and botany. The reactionary nature of the chromosome theory of heredity lies in its assertion that chromosomes contained in developing reproductive cells exclusively predetermine the hereditary characteristics of an organism, independently of the rest of the organism, its metabolism, and the influence of external conditions. According to this doctrine, chromosomes are transmitted through reproductive cells from generation to generation without being newly formed or undergoing change. Such a lifeless theory could not effectively promote the development of crop cultivation and livestock husbandry. The dissemination of Michurin’s doctrine and its application to the development of socialist agriculture were obstructed by the Weismannist-Morganists, who advocated the chromosome theory of heredity and whose conclusions went so far as to assert that natural phenomena were unknowable. Academician Lysenko’s report, On the Situation in Biological Science, and the debates held at the Session of the All-Union Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences from July 31 to August 7, 1948, exposed and completely defeated the Weismannist-Morganists, who were the representatives and propagators of idealist and metaphysical bourgeois theories in agricultural science and practice. Their pseudoscientific doctrine was replaced by Soviet Michurinist biology. The research conducted by Soviet scientists on these genuinely scientific foundations armed our agriculture with knowledge and guided it along the path of transforming the nature of plants and animals. The investigation and evaluation of the wild forage vegetation of our country have always received special attention from scientists. The first work describing wild forage vegetation was produced by Academicians Lepekhin and Pallas following their expeditions to the southern and eastern regions of Russia between 1767 and 1773. Abroad, the earliest works evaluating wild plants as forage and examining their palatability to livestock were produced by the Swedish scientist Linnaeus in the second half of the eighteenth century. In Russia, research into the forage value of wild plants developed entirely independently of the work of Linnaeus and his pupils. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Russian scientists A. T. Bolotov, Rozlatovsky, G. I. Engelman, and P. A. Levshin studied forage grasses and conducted experiments in grass sowing. G. I. Engelman published works on meadow management in which he pointed out differences in the palatability of various plants to different kinds of livestock and discussed harmful and beneficial grasses, grassland improvement, seed collection, and other matters. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, I. I. Samarin and D. M. Poltoratsky practiced grass sowing on their own farms. A. V. Sovetov regarded the latter as the founder of field grass cultivation in Russia. Professor I. Shchegolov published descriptions of various economically valuable plants growing in Russia. The agricultural scientific societies founded during the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century played an important role in advancing knowledge of the useful properties of wild plants. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the prominent Russian scientist A. E. Stoeletov described numerous forage grasses in detail in such works as On the Cultivation of Field Forage Grasses and Forage Grasses. He also provided an outline of the history of grass sowing in Russia. Another eminent Russian scientist, Professor I. A. Stebut, provided detailed descriptions of more than sixty major forage grasses. He divided them into superior and medium-quality groups and indicated the flowering time, ripening period, yield, suitability for haymaking or grazing, season of use, sowing rate, and cultivation region of each plant. The outstanding scientist Professor P. A. Kostychev played an enormous role in the development of Russian arable agriculture. In his works, he addressed various questions of forage production, including the cultivation of forage grasses, harvesting periods, and crop rotation. He was the first to conduct investigations and provide economic descriptions of hayfields and pastures, principally in steppe regions. He supplied important data on the chemical composition and palatability of many common wild plants and emphasized the importance of the proper harvesting period for grass hay. The scientist L. Pavlovich carried out extensive work evaluating the forage value of wild plants growing in Ukraine. He described 224 species. In 1905, V. G. Belyaev described 348 wild and cultivated forage plants. In 1908, a comprehensive economic evaluation was made of 1,550 plant species, 550 of which were characterized in terms of their forage value. In tsarist Russia, experimental work in meadow management was conducted through private initiative. It was not until the end of the previous century that the Agricultural Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and State Domains began to participate in this work. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, provincial and district zemstvos began working in the field of meadow management. Before the Revolution, prominent scientists such as A. M. Dmitriev, who studied forage lands, N. N. Klingen, and Professor V. S. Bogdan had already begun extensive work in this field. The broad study of plants and their introduction into cultivation began during the first decades of the nineteenth century under the leadership of Academician V. R. Williams, who was the first in the world to provide a theoretical foundation for a system of agronomic measures in meadow management. Experimental stations began to be established in 1910, principally for the study of forage plants and other questions of forage production. A relatively extensive network of experimental and demonstration stations was developed to test new methods of forage-plant cultivation and meadow management. Under Soviet rule, the activities of outstanding meadow scientists developed on a particularly broad scale. In 1917, V. R. Williams and A. M. Dmitriev established the Forage Plant Research Station. In 1922, the Institute of Meadow Science was organized. In 1930, it was reorganized as the Institute of Forage, which is now carrying out extensive research into problems of forage production. Soviet scientific institutions conducted a large amount of research on individual forage plants, both cultivated and wild. Special mention must be made of the outstanding contribution of the following Soviet scientists and Stalin Prize laureates to the study of forage-production problems: A. M. Dmitriev, I. V. Larin, S. N. Smelov, V. I. Yeleev, and others. They carried out research to determine the economic significance of forage plants and investigated other highly important questions of forage production, including the improvement of natural grasslands, the rational use of hayfields and pastures, the sowing of grass mixtures, the selection of crops and sowing dates, and the management of newly sown grasslands. Of great importance to the study of forage plants was the survey of the natural forage lands of the Soviet Union conducted from 1931 to 1933 by the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture of the USSR and the Institute of Forage under the direction of L. G. Ramensky. This survey covered almost all territories and provinces of the country. The collective monograph Forage Plants of Natural Hayfields and Pastures, prepared by scientists of the All-Union Williams Scientific Research Institute of Forage, provided descriptions of the forage characteristics of 2,778 plant species. The second edition of this monumental work is now being published in three volumes under the editorship of Professor I. V. Larin, the honorary director of the institute and an Honored Scientist. The first volume already published was awarded the Stalin Prize. The complete edition will contain forage descriptions of no fewer than 4,000 plant species. Soviet agrobiological science, as a new and advanced direction in biology and as a theory for the revolutionary transformation of nature, is inseparably connected with socialist agriculture. Michurinist agrobiology revealed and mobilized the enormous potential for increasing crop yields and livestock productivity. Michurin’s maxim, “We cannot wait for favors from nature; our task is to wrest them from her,” when put into practice, reveals the unlimited possibilities for increasing the productivity of our agriculture. Every day, the leading workers of socialist agriculture, masters of high yields, and livestock workers who have achieved outstanding results are guided by Michurinist agrobiology. Through their practical work, they confirm Michurin’s doctrine concerning the decisive influence of external conditions upon the productivity of plants and animals. The grass-field system of agriculture, founded upon the teachings of Dokuchaev, Kostychev, and Williams, is the principal means of further increasing the productivity of arable farming and livestock husbandry. The resolution on the Three-Year Plan for the Development of Publicly Owned Productive Livestock Husbandry for 1949–1954, adopted in April 1949 by the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was of enormous importance for strengthening the fodder base and marked a new stage in the development of Soviet livestock husbandry. The resolution stated: “At present, when major achievements have been made in improving the grain economy and the necessary prerequisites have been created for a further increase in grain production, the task of developing livestock husbandry to the fullest extent has been placed on the agenda. This is the central task of the Party and the state in the development of agriculture.” In accordance with the instructions of the Party and the Government, the problems of forage production and of expanding and strengthening the fodder base acquired particular importance. The resolution emphasized that a stable fodder base had to be established for livestock husbandry in the shortest possible time, ensuring that livestock would be adequately fed in both summer and winter. To achieve this objective, tasks were established for the procurement of coarse and succulent feeds, the creation of grain-feed reserves on collective farms, the sowing of perennial grasses, forage root crops, and silage crops, and the extensive use of green fodder from natural and artificial hayfields and pastures. In addition, the resolution pointed out the need to increase the production of feeds processed from food-industry waste and to expand the manufacture of compound feeds. The Directives of the Nineteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union concerning the Fifth Five-Year Plan for the Development of the USSR for 1951–1955 outlined the subsequent stage of agricultural development. The Directives stated: “In the sphere of agriculture, the principal task remains that of increasing the yield per unit area of all agricultural crops, further increasing the number of publicly owned livestock while substantially raising their productivity, and increasing the gross and marketable output of crop production and livestock husbandry by further strengthening and developing the publicly owned economy of collective farms, introducing advanced machinery and agricultural techniques into agriculture, and improving the work of state farms and machine-tractor stations.” Agriculture was to become more productive and technically advanced, with well-developed grass cultivation and proper crop rotations, and with a larger proportion of the sown area devoted to industrial crops, forage crops, vegetable crops, and potatoes. In addition to increasing the yield per unit area of all agricultural crops, the Fifth Five-Year Plan provided for a further increase in the number and productivity of publicly owned livestock and for the further strengthening of the fodder base as livestock husbandry developed. The Directives of the Nineteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union contained the following instruction: “Increase forage production: hay by 80–90 percent, root and tuber crops by three to four times, and silage by two times.” The Directives also indicated the means of further strengthening the fodder base: the introduction of proper crop rotations with a larger proportion of forage crops; the development of grass cultivation; land drainage; the further expansion of irrigation and water supply; the establishment of highly productive hayfields and pasture plots in Central Asia and Kazakhstan; the organization of well-equipped pastures in areas supplied with water; and the establishment in these areas of well-organized pastures for large and exceptionally large flocks of sheep and other livestock. On state farms, in order to establish a stable fodder base and fully supply livestock with coarse and succulent feeds, it was planned to increase the area sown with forage crops by 45–55 percent and to achieve, in the main, the comprehensive mechanization of all the most labor-intensive operations involved in harvesting and preparing feed. The Resolution On Measures for the Further Development of Soviet Agriculture, adopted by the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on September 7, 1953, following the report of N. S. Khrushchev, emphasized the exceptional importance of the fodder base: “...Livestock husbandry cannot advance unless Party, Soviet, and agricultural bodies, as well as all agricultural workers, seriously undertake the establishment of a direct fodder base on every collective farm and state farm. The backward condition of the fodder base in many regions and collective farms has reached a completely intolerable level.” The same resolution outlined specific means of improving the fodder base: “Strive to expand the sown area and sharply increase the yield per unit area of perennial and annual grasses, maize and sunflower for silage, forage root crops, and forage melons.” All these measures, prescribed in the Directives of the Nineteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and in the Resolution of the Plenum of the Central Committee dated September 7, 1953, indicated the principal path to be followed in further strengthening the fodder base of our country. In this textbook, the problems of forage production are examined in accordance with the tasks established by the Party and the Government in the sphere of livestock husbandry. Veterinary workers play a particularly important role in implementing the plan for the development of publicly owned livestock husbandry, especially in organizing and strengthening the fodder base. The Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on the Three-Year Plan for the Development of Publicly Owned Productive Livestock Husbandry stated that one of the principal tasks of the unified state livestock and veterinary network should be the organization of forage production. In their practical work, veterinary specialists need not only to study questions of forage production but also to understand plants, particularly forage, harmful, poisonous, and medicinal plants, as well as the laws governing the plant kingdom. Consequently, in addition to forage production, the study of botany is a necessary component of the veterinary education system. In accordance with the curricula of veterinary institutes and veterinary faculties, this textbook is intended to provide a concise account of the fundamental laws of plant life and development. This material constitutes the first sixteen chapters, entitled Fundamentals of Botany. The remaining chapters describe the organizational, economic, and agronomic measures directly related to the production and use of forage, that is, the entire complex of questions encompassed by the concept of “forage production.” They describe the forage vegetation of natural forage lands and explain methods for improving and rationally using natural hayfields and pastures, establishing artificial grassland pastures and hayfields, organizing pasture management, and producing and storing hay. They also present the fundamentals of succulent-feed and silage production, grain feeds, and other forage resources. These are the subjects covered in the textbook Forage Production and Fundamentals of Botany.