Native, naturalised, pasture, and new grass introductions are discussed in terms of concepts of moisture, temperature, fertility, and utilisation gradients; characteristics of the New Zealand high country environment; and their utility for introduction into low-input pastoral systems. The perennial, long-lived habit of native grass is mimicked in introduced grasses. Poa colensoi is the best native grass, but there is a need for wider evaluation of serai non-tussock species. There is a greater frequency of spreading habit and annuals in naturalised low-input species. The "try it and see" and genotype/environment analysis are advocated for screening new introductions.
The South Island hill and high country is defined as those areas which were in natural grassland at the time of early European settlement. This includes the major geographical regions of dry hill and high country of Marlborough, Canterbury and North Otago, and the wet acid tussock grasslands of Otago and Southland. To define the most appropriate pasture species for farming in these areas, it is first necessary to define the appropriate environmental factors since they largely determine the types of farming systems possible. Once this has been done, it will be found that there are only one or two pasture species which are the best option in each environment or farming system.
Lucerne is no more productive than traditional clovers on drought-prone, low fertility soils with acid subsoils. Introductions of a variety of alternative legumes, and in particular Lotus corniculatus (birdsfoot trefoil), were compared on a high country yellow-brown earth soil developed on outwashed plains with acid subsoils. Lines and cultivars were scored for a variety of agronomic attributes, the most important in this environment being dry matter yields, autumn production, persistence, and drought tolerance. Principal component analysis was used to order the large amounts of data. Several cultivars and lines of L. corniculatus originating from Mediterranean/mild temperate, maritime Europe/cool temperate climates and South America were superior to other legume species and to other cultivars and lines of L. corniculatus. Individual plants which were consistently superior were selected to be cloned to produce an experimental "Dry land" cultivar.
SummaryThe precision of the capacitance probe in detecting herbage mass differences between treatments has been assessed on a cross section of field trials in Otago-Southland, New Zealand. Used thoughtfully, the probe appears at least as good as any other alternative. Corrected meter readings from the probe may be used directly for relative ranking of treatments although calibration is desirable for interpretation purposes, and becomes essential when swards of widely differing composition are to be related. Considerable overall time savings, especially in the laboratory, are possible in comparison with other methods.
The practice of doing a single comparative trial at a particular site and extrapolating results from that site to many others, ignores the potential variability in results which may occur when the same treatments are applied in different environments. In order to overcome this d~fficulty with on-farm investigative developments, the concept has been extended. Single replicates of simple experiments at many sites are proposed as a method for the agronomic evaluation of plants, fertilisers, and weed or pest control strategies. It is concluded that this extension will allow more general conclusions and more widespread technology transfer to take place.
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