A Comparison of Three Dry Matter Forage Production Methods Used in South Africa

A common method for determining forage production of rangelands is by clipping and weighing forage from quadrats with predetermined areas. This technique is however time consuming. Other techniques which require less time and labour include amongst others using the disk pasture meter or phytomass derived from the vegetation classification program PHYTOTAB, in conjunction with the Plant Number Scale, which is used to determine vegetation canopy cover. The phytomass determined using PHYTOTAB/Plant Number Scale and the disk pasture meter was compared to the phytomass obtained from the actual clipping and weighing of forage. Tests showed that there were indeed statistically significant differences between the mean phytomass values of the three techniques. Considerable variation was shown in the results of the disk pasture meter readings compared to the other two techniques. The phytomass values obtained using the disk pasture meter were significantly higher than the phytomass determined using both the PHYTOTAB/Plant Number Scale and the clipping and weighing techniques. Results further indicated a significant similarity in the phytomass determined using the PHYTOTAB/Plant Number Scale and the clipping and weighing technique. The results of this pilot study need further investigation.

• Publication year

  2014

• Venue

  International Journal of Ecology

• Publication date

  2014-04-27

• Fields of study

  Agricultural and Food Sciences, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1155/2014/314939
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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