Grassland Research in the British Empire

Abstract

THROUGHOUT the British Empire there are vast tracts of natural pastures which produce herbage of an inferior nutritive value. A large body of evidence has been accumulated in recent years to show that this low nutritive value is to be correlated with deficiencies of inorganic constituents, such as calcium, phosphorus, and chlorine, in the herbage, a condition which is the outcome of growth on mineral-deficient soils. Animals ranging over these pastoral areas and subsisting exclusively on such mineral-deficient herbage, display a low rate of growth and production compared with what is possible on good cultivated pastures. With this decreased growth rate are usually associated lowered fertility and susceptibility to various forms of disease.