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Validation Of A Technique For Estimating Alfalfa (Medicago Sativa) Biomass From Canopy Volume, Christopher G. Misar, Lan Xu, Arvid Boe, Roger N. Gates, Patricia S. Johnson

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Determining biomass production of individual alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) plants in space planted evaluation studies is generally not feasible. Clipping plants is time consuming, expensive, and often not possible if the plants are subjected to grazing. A regression function (Bʹ = 0.72558 + 0.11638 × Vʹ) was developed from spaced plants growing on rangeland in northwestern South Dakota near Buffalo to nondestructively estimate individual plant biomass (B) from canopy volume (V). However, external validation is necessary to effectively apply the model to other environments. In the summer of 2015, new data to validate the model were collected from spaced plants …