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For the development of mechanistic models of herbage digestibility, quantitative insight into the effects of age, temperature and cultivar on digestibility characteristics of individual plant parts is needed. Towards that goal, glasshouse experiments were conducted at day/night temperatures of 13/8, 18/13 and 23/18°C with vegetative and reproductive crops of two populations of perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L) selected for differences in leaf blade digestibility. Cell wall content (CWC) and true cell wall and organic matter digestibility (CWD and OMD) of vegetative and reproductive tillers were related to dimensions, mass, CWC and digestibility of separate plant parts. Compared with the vegetative tillers, the reproductive tillers had higher rates of leaf appearance, organic matter growth and CWD decline. Strikingly, for both tiller types, no direct effect of temperature on whole tiller CWD was observed, since temperature effects could be eliminated completely by relating CWD to development stage (DVS) expressed as number of leaves appearing on the main tiller. Temperature effects on CWD were restricted to its influence on tiller development rate only. The decline of CWD of individual plant parts with DVS in the reproductive tillers could be described with a negative exponential curve, which reached an asymptote that was higher for leaf blades (755 g kg À1 ) than for leaf sheaths (491 g kg À1 ) and stem internodes (230 g kg À1 ). However, all plant parts in both tiller types had the same fractional CWD decline rate of 0.395 per leaf appearance interval, independent of plant part insertion level, population or temperature. Differences between temperature treatments in OMD were caused by the higher CWC of plant parts at higher temperature, due to a stronger decline of the specific organic matter mass than of the specific cell wall mass of plant parts at increasing temperature. Differences in whole tiller OMD between populations were observed only for vegetative tillers and were also caused by differences in CWC. It is concluded that temperature increase accelerated both the tiller development rate and the rate of decline of CWD during aging to the same extent, whereas plant parts responded similarly in the fractional CWD decline pattern as a function of DVS. These trends offer unique possibilities for modelling grass digestibility under contrasting temperature regimes. INTRODUCTIONTemperature and reproductive development are the most important factors determining composition and digestibility of grass. 1 Temperature affects digestibility through changes in three plant characteristics: (i) the rate of development, (ii) the ratio between cell wall and cell contents and (iii) the rate of cell wall aging, which results in a decline of cell wall digestibility. The contribution of these three plant processes to the generally observed temperature effect has not been quantified before and will be analysed in this paper.The analysis is based on glasshouse experiments with vegetative and reproductive tillers of two popul...

With the Dry Weight Rank (DWR) method of 't Mannetje and Haydock [see Journal of British Grassland Society (1963) 18, 268-275] for botanical analysis in pastures, the dry weight proportions of species are estimated from their first, second and third ranks in dry weight in single quadrats. The yield correction of Haydock and Shaw [see Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture and Animal Husbandry (1975) 15, 663-670] is used additionally to solve the problem of the respective under- and overestimates of the dry weight proportions of high and low yielding species when these grow in patches. In this paper the DWR method is evaluated by means of computer simulation. Main element of the simulation model is a computer sampling program with which a fictitious vegetation can be sampled with a circular quadrat. The output shows that the DWR method works well using relatively small sampling quadrats with, on average, only a few plants per quadrat, irrespective of the horizontal vegetation structure. In vegetations where species grow patchwise, satisfactory results are also obtained using large quadrats with much more plants (i.e. tens) per quadrat. The reason is that in these cases also minor species can compete successfully for first, second and third ranks. However, it appeared that only a certain degree of patchiness is necessary, and with the usually applied quadrat sizes up to 25 dmsuperscript 2, probably in most vegetations this condition is fulfilled. Care should be taken in applying the DWR method for estimating species composition in recently sown grasslands where species usually occur more or less at random. In those cases, in principle a very small sampling quadrat (smaller than 1 dmsuperscript 2) could be used. However, this has practical limitations since the quadrat size should not be too small for realistic yield estimations, needed for the Haydock & Shaw yield correction. The simulations revealed that one condition (i.e., that the sampling quadrat should be at least as large that it usually contains three or more species) is not necessary because of the almost always perfect functioning of the correction for missing ranks. Generally speaking, a sampling quadrat should be chosen not larger than is strictly necessary from the viewpoint of horizontal vegetation structure and from the viewpoint of realistic yield estimations. Multipliers calculated from simulation data could satisfactorily mimic the original multipliers of DWR given by 't Mannetje & Haydock. It is postulated that the DWR method is well suited for studying vegetation changes in old, floristically diverse grasslands with dominant species often in moderate dry weight proportions and species usually growing in patches.

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