Use of Grasshopper® for pasture biomass maps at high spatial resolution

Nowadays, farmers need support in the decision making process to adopt optimized and sustainable management strategies, such as rotational grazing (Allen et al., 2011), to balance forage production and animal intake in animal production systems. However, to achieve this goal, timely and detailed information on vegetation growth during the grazing season is required. These data are not always easy to come by, especially in semi-extensive grazing systems, where field sampling collection of aboveground biomass (AGB) is an expensive and time-consuming task. The Rising Plate Meters (RPM), devices used to measure compressed sward height, can be considered a valuable option to monitor herbage mass in a more efficient way especially in extensive grazing systems (Sanderson et al., 2001). Grasshopper® (McSweeney et al., 2019) is a new-generation RPM capable of providing numerous information (e.g. height of vegetation, estimated pasture production, optimal days of grazing for a specific paddock, etc.) that can help farmers in optimizing grazing management. It works through a Bluetooth connection with portable devices (such as a normal smartphone), allowing a real-time information of on-field measurements. In this specific study we utilized the RPM Grasshopper® to acquire data on compressed grass height (CGH) and reconstruct high resolution maps of pasture production, starting from a site-specific correlation between AGB and CGH