Hart L., Werner J., Velasco E., Perdana-Decker S., Weber J., Dickhöfer U., Umstätter C.
Reliable biomass estimates of multispecies grassland using the rising plate meter.
In: Grasland Science in Europe, Vol 25 - Meeting the future demands for grassland production. 19-22 October, Hrsg. Organising Commitee of the 28th General Meeting of the European Grassland Federation, Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE), Helsinki, Finland, 2020.
Rising plate meters are a powerful and easy-to-use tool for quantifying the available forage on pastures. Today, semi-automated systems convert compressed sward height measurements into a biomass estimate in real-time and even georeferenced. However, species-rich pastures can contain very heterogeneous biomass and we hypothesised that one standard conversion equation is not suitable for different swards. Therefore, we studied the effect of the botanical composition of different swards in various field experiments in southern Germany and Switzerland throughout the vegetation period in 2019. Sampled swards were classified into ryegrass-rich, grass-rich, herb-clover-rich or balanced between grass, herb and clover. A first analysis verified the hypothesis that sward type affects the adequate estimation of available biomass. In order to achieve reliable biomass estimations based on compressed sward height, we propose different conversions for rising plate meter users based on sward composition.
