The novel optical point quadrats used in estimating % ground cover as part of the TGA assessments are no longer available from Robert Laycock as they have been copied by commercial companies and are now available elsewhere.
The original design was produced under a Government contract and patenting was not an option. Note that there should be 10 pairs of pins on the instrument. Some commercially available point quadrats have 20 pairs.
They can be used on all close-mown sports turf surfaces and give more reliable results for turf than traditional square quadrats or the large diameter pin quadrats often used in plant ecological studies.
They are based on the instrument which is now widely used around the world and which was devised by Robert Laycock when he was researching turfgrass cultivars at the Sports Turf Research Institute, Bingley (originally published as Laycock and Canaway (1980) in the Journal of the Sports Turf Research Institute 56, 91-92).
