An improved electronic capacitance meter for estimating herbage mass.

An improved electronic capacitance pasture meter is described, and data on its calibration and use in a grazing trial are presented. The instrument is light (1·4 kg) and portable, and uses integrated circuits to record the readings from a number of sampled sites. It has a digital display and can be constructed for a modest cost. The meter is mainly responsive to the surface area of the herbage and hence it is less sensitive to variations in moisture content of the pasture than previous meters. Thus it can be calibrated to measure the mass of herbage dry matter to ground level and reduces the need to collect and dry herbage samples for frequent recalibration of the instrument.