A review is given of progress in deriving the effective action for hadronic physics, S[π, ϱ, ω,.., N, N,..] , from the fundamental defining action of QCD, S[ q, q, A μ a] . This is a problem in quantum field theory and the most success so far has been achieved using functional integral calculus (FIC) techniques. This formulates the problem as an exercise in changing the variables of integration in the functional integrals, from those of the quark and gluon fields to those of the (bare) meson and baryon fields. The appropriate variables are determined by the dynamics of QCD, and the final hadronic variables (essentially the ‘normal modes’ of QCD) are local fields describing the ‘centre-of-mass’ motion of extended bound states of quarks. The quarks are extensively dressed by the gluons, and the detailed aspects of the hidden chiral symmetry emerge naturally from the formalism. Particular attention is given to covariant integral equations which determine bare nucleon structure (i.e. in the quenched approximation). These equations, which arise from the closed double-helix diagrams of the FIC analysis, describe the baryons in terms of quark-diquark structure, in the form of Faddeev equations. This hadronisation of QCD also generates the dressing of these baryons by the pions, and the non-local πNN coupling.