Imagine knowing.

Imagine knowing, almost immediately, for what reason much nutrition a calf is getting from the grass it's grazing on--or plane how much weight it'll gain if it continues eating that particular grass.

That may united day be possible, thanks to spectral reflectance studies at ARS s Grazinglands Research Laboratory in El Reno, Oklahoma.

consummate development and commercial use of this technology are at least a hardly any years away. But an important pace toward that goal was taken freshly when the ARS laboratory established a cooperative research and progression in a continuously ascending gradation agreement (CRADA) with two Oklahoma firms. subordinate to it, the firms will design and bring out a small, hand-held, low-cost optical unallied sensor that can be used in the field to calculate, store, and display data in succession a forage's nutrient quality.

"A critical shortcoming in grazingland management is an inability to measure--in real time--the nutritional value of live, standing forages forward pastures," says soil scientist Patrick Starks. "This information is requireed to make informed land- and livestock-management decisions about stocking rates, beginning and ending dates for grazing, and feeding of complements Spectral reflectance shows great potential for eliminating this problem"

Starks, who's in the Oklahoma facility's Great Plains Agro-climate and Natural Resources Research Unit, animal scientist William Phillips of the lab's Forage and Livestock Production Research Unit, and Samuel Coleman of ARS's Subtropical Agricultural Research Station in Brooksville, Florida, have already demonstrated that spectral reflectance data can portray quality of forage grasses with accuracy comparable to conventional lab analysis.

The important difference is that spectral reflectance data can be advanceed in seconds. Current analysis arrangements entail clipping, near-infrared spectroscopy, and chemical courses that, while accurate and site-specific, are laborious and take days to complete

"There are vast potential benefits to this technology," says Starks. "In addition to reducing manual sampling, it can lead to nutritional landscape mapping and more efficient pasture management and postscript feeding."

Starks says these studies may make trial of most valuable in tipping growers distant from as to when or whether forage postscripts are needed. "We're talking about performing precision supplementation."

Lead Time for Deeisionmaking

Starks points public that growers currently assume that bermuda-grass's protein ease is high at the start of the growing season and remains in the same manner for 6 to 8 weeks; then supplementing is requireed "We want to know whether spectral reflectance can give us an earlier warning if nutrient quality of that grass is falling off" says Starks. "This would give us lead time for decisionmaking and an insight into when to start supplementing."

Adds Phillips, "This technology can give grazing managers early warning of nutrient deficiencies and can also be used to harvest hay at a desired quality of the same height Grazing managers could use it to induce cattle to various pastures to capture forage at its highest quality."

unconnected unrelated sensing collects data by detecting and measuring throw backed or emitted light, heat, unmutilated and radio waves. In this reflection data was collected in the field with a hand-held commercial hyperspectral radiometer, which is a portable, lightwave-reading machine that was positioned to sample 0.6-square-foot swaths. The scientists used the equipment to scan plants and estimate their digestibility between the walls of analysis of 252 wavebands of the electromagnetic spectrum

subject to the CRADA, a basic instrument that could single day make this technology widely available is being disentangleed by former ARS scientist Frank R Schiebe, who is now president of Durant Design and unfolding in Durant, Oklahoma. Assisting him is Dewain Davis, president of TerraVerde Technologies in Stillwater, Oklahoma. The CRADA calls for Davis's firm to manufacture and market the device one time it's fully developed and evaluated.

The research at El Reno focused in succession bermudagrass, Cynodon dactylon, alone and with a scattering of senescent downy brome Bromus tectorum, and golden bristlegrass, Setaria glauca. It compared to what degree conventional and real-time data-collecting regularitys detected concentrations of nitrogen and other components

Forage lops and native rangelands are vital to U livestock interests, since they're the main fe staple of all ruminant animals tied to the meat and dairy industries. With the exception of animals being fattened onward grain, most of the 100 million head of cattle and 6 million sheep in the United States hang on one of the four major forms of forage: pasture, range, hay, or silage.

Predicting Weight Gains and Growth

In addition to investigating faster forage-nutrition analysis, the work has spawned an interesting side cogitation Researchers found that the technology can also help predict weight gains and product of foraging animals.

ARS animal scientist Michael Brown and Redlands Community body undergraduate student Amina Phillips monitored spring-born lambs for 3 years to descry whether animal weight gains could be predicted using spectral reflectance measurements taken in pastures.