About Authors

Max Shelton obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of Queensland and is now an Associate Professor responsible for teaching and research in pasture science and agroforestry at UQ. His current research interest is the agronomy and utilization of tropical forage tree legumes for both small and large-scale ruminant livestock production systems. From 1995 to 2000 he was research leader of a project "New Leucaenas for Southeast Asian, Pacific and Australian Agriculture" supported by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). This program comprised work on the germplasm evaluation, environmental adaptation, forage quality and animal productivity of a world germplasm collection representing the entire Leucaena genus. With his colleague, Dr Ross Gutteridge, he has conducted 5 international short courses on the topic "Forage Tree Legumes - Multipurpose Species for Agriculture" and he has since conducted many short courses for Australian graziers on the establishment and management of broadacre leucaena and grass pastures. Dr Shelton has worked extensively on forage and livestock systems in the Southeast Asian and Pacific regions over 25 years. He has published widely including 5 books (joint editorship) and more than 140 papers published or submitted to refereed journals or in edited chapters of books or proceedings, conference papers, and monographs. While in FAO as a visiting scientist he wrote an article on: "Tropical Forage Tree legumes:Key Development Issues"