ELIGIBILITY: This project is for a student taking the MSc in Statistics and Sustainability.
In agriculture, grasslands can play an important role in producing feed for animals and maintaining soil health in crop rotations. In recent years, mixing plant species with complementary traits have been proposed as a strategy to reduce the quantity of synthetic fertiliser required to maintain an agricultural grassland, without causing a loss in production. There are many negative environmental impacts of applying synthetic fertiliser, thus reducing its application may improve the sustainability of the system. However, it is important that any management approach adopted would limit variation in productivity over multiple harvests in a growing season.
This project will investigate varying methods to assess yield and yield variability over harvests within a growing season. As part of this work, yield data will be analysed that was collected during an agricultural grassland field experiment that was carried out in Ireland where plant diversity was manipulated across plots, and plots were harvested seven times over a growing season.