New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research abstracts
The relationship between herbage mass and pasture accumulation rate in
winter
S. J. BLUETT
C. MATTHEW
G. J. BISHOP-HURLEY
Department of Plant Science
Massey University
Private Bag 11-222
Palmerston North, New Zealand
S. J. HASLETT
Department of Statistics
Massey University
Private Bag 11-222
Palmerston North, New Zealand
J. HODGSON
Department of Plant Science
Massey University
Private Bag 11-222
Palmerston North, New Zealand
Abstract Herbage mass of rotationally grazed paddocks was
measured by pasture plate meter on Massey No. 4 Dairy Farm in the Manawatu and
at Limestone Downs, a sheep and beef property near Port Waikato, in the North
Island, New Zealand. Data were collated and pasture accumulation rates
calculated. A quadratic regression model was fitted to both farm data sets to
investigate the relationship between herbage mass and pasture accumulation rate
for the May to August period over two years. Although the data sets contained a
large amount of unexplained variation, the effect of herbage mass on pasture
accumulation rate was found to be significant (P < 0.01). The
estimate for herbage mass which maximised pasture accumulation rate was 2500 kg
DM ha-1 for No. 4 Dairy Farm. The optimum could not be estimated for
Limestone Downs because of substantial data variability. Because the confidence
interval for the dairy farm estimate of optimum is wide, it can not be
concluded unequivocally that optimum herbage mass for New Zealand conditions is
higher than the figure of 1250 kg DM ha-1 identified in Britain.
However, there is indication that management that results in higher
post-grazing residuals will enable higher pasture accumulation rates on at
least some New Zealand dairy farms. This question of optimum pasture cover
should be the focus of further research on a range of New Zealand farm types.
Keywords Pasture accumulation rate; herbage mass; quadratic
regression; on-farm data
New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research, 1998, Vol. 41: 299-305
0028-8233/98/4103-0299 $7.00/0 (c) The Royal Society of New Zealand
1998
PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (556K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)
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