| dc.description.abstract | It is a simple and yet fundamental biological concept that one of the essential differences between plants and animals lies in their mode of nutrition. The plant is able to use soil nutrient and synthesize its nutritional requirements in the presence of light by the process of carbon assimilation. The animal ls entirely dependent on those synthesized plant products for its nutrition. In this very essential difference ruminants and herbage plants assume a commensal relationship, becoming increasingly interdependent as systems of pasture and animal production intensify. This relationship has become a well accepted principle in herbage agronomy as to appear almost a statement of the obvious. Nevertheless the writer submits that progress in this field during the past two decades has been concerned almost solely with the botanical aspects of plant production. The development of strains of plants for grazing conditions, with the additional benefits of an extended grazing season, and greater herbage bulk per acre, are achievements of the plant breeder which have been making an immeasurable contribution to animal production. In spite of the ultimate use of herbage plants however, studies of the interaction of animal and plant have lagged behind the advances made by the plant breeder. The animal has been used almost exclusively either as a measure of plant production in terms of liveweight increase, or as the controllable factor for the purpose of imposing particular environmental conditions upon individual plant species or communities. Bathe 1947 (1). [From Prologue] | en |
