A study on grass yield estimation methods using own making pasture meter
2010
Maeda, Y., Fukushima-ken. Agricultural Technology Center (Japan). Livestock Research Center
The amount of grass produced in a large area is conventionally estimated from those in small quadrates, using a calibration curve method. This procedure is time-consuming and the data obtained lacks accuracy. Some foreign developed pasture meters are available on the market, but they have not been widely used by the farmers because of their high prices. In this study, the fabrication method of an own making pasture meter which has sufficient accuracy was contrived, and the accuracies and the labor time of some estimation methods were examined. The material cost of an own making pasture meter was only about 600 yen. The contribution coefficient of the calibration curve was 0.791 on the own making pasture meter, and it was 0.592 on the commercial pasture meter. The large estimation error was observed in the grazing pasture compared to the grass field. The most accurate estimation was gamma distribution method when the data was measured with an own making pasture meter. The average labor time of measurement in the fields was 23.7 minutes on quadrat sampling method and it was 11.0 minutes on simple gamma distribution method. By using above mentioned results, the grass production estimation program was developed so that farmers and technical workers can use this method easily.
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