R.B. WAITE

Division of Tropical Crops and Pastures, CSIRO, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Abstract

The BOTANAL procedures for calibrated visual estimates of yield and botanical composition of grazed pastures were compared with cutting and sorting when estimating pasture growth in ungrazed exclosures.
Estimates of yield and composition derived from BOTANAL were very similar to those obtained with cutting and sorting in exclosures and small plots. The BOTANAL procedure allowed pasture growth to be monitored over time without the destruction of cutting and took only 10% of the time required to cut and sort the same number of quadrats.