Adesmia bicolor De Candolle is a winter active, highly palatable and non-toxic perennial forage legume from Uruguay. It is widely distributed as a minor component of the native grasslands, co-existing with grasses of the genera Paspalum, Axonopus, Schizachyrium, Chloris, Eragrostis Stipa, Bothriochloa and others. Two main collecting missions (seeds and nodules) were conducted in Uruguay in the late springs of 1997 and 2003. In 2004, 2060 plants corresponding to 17 accessions were evaluated at INIA research stations: Glencoe (700 spaced plants), La Magnolia (510 spaced plants), and at INIA Tacuarembó greenhouse (850 pots). Since June 2004 the characters: winter and spring forage production, quantity and moment of flowering, leaf size, length and diameter of stolons, diseases and summer ability to survive droughts were measured. DNA was extracted from 10 plants per accession and molecular studies using RAPD showed a large variability within and among accessions, as expected for an allogamous species. Accessions with large number of seeds were exchanged with Florida, USA, in 2004 and plantings were made at Brooksville in fall 2004 and transplants were taken to Gainesville in February 2005. Approximately 80% of all of the transplanted material survived the initial establishment phase and survived several freezes in December and January. Similar forage performance traits will be measured at Brooksville and Gainesville as in Uruguay. The promising variability present in the species allowed the start of a breeding program on A. bicolor in Uruguay. Selected plants for forage production, flowering date, profuse flowering and size of leaves will be poly-crossed in the spring 2005 to generate the material for the second cycle of selection. Rhizobium strains for maximum nodulation and N2 fixation are being evaluated. The major focus of evaluations in Florida will be determination of general environmental adaptability and persistence.