tonnes/hectare/year (t/ha/yr)
Also known as: t ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ · annual yield per hectare
The standard unit for expressing annual biomass yield from agricultural land — tonnes of fresh or dry material produced per hectare per year, used for energy crop and feedstock planning.
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What is tonnes/hectare/year?
Tonnes per hectare per year (t/ha/yr) is the standard productivity unit for agricultural land in bioenergy and food-crop planning. It expresses how much biomass — whether fresh-weight, dry-matter, or volatile solids — a hectare of land produces in 365 days of cropping. The unit normalises across crop types, climatic zones, and farm sizes, allowing direct comparison between energy crops, food crops, residue yields, and dedicated plantations. A subscript or qualifier almost always accompanies the unit in technical documents: t fresh/ha/yr, t DM/ha/yr (dry matter), or t VS/ha/yr (volatile solids — the biogas-relevant fraction).
For Indian CBG feedstock planning, characteristic ranges anchor every business plan. Napier grass achieves 100–200 t fresh/ha/yr at 18–22% dry matter, equivalent to 20–40 t DM/ha/yr — the highest among commercial energy crops. Sugarcane (when whole-plant harvested) yields 70–90 t fresh/ha/yr. High-biomass maize produces 40–60 t fresh/ha/yr at silage harvest. Sweet sorghum yields 30–50 t fresh/ha/yr in 110–120 day campaigns. Among residues collected per hectare of food cropping: paddy straw at 4–6 t/ha/yr, wheat straw 3–5 t/ha/yr, cotton stalks 4–8 t/ha/yr, sugarcane trash 10–15 t/ha/yr (often burnt rather than collected). Bagasse from sugar mills is 30–35% of cane crushed but is typically used in-mill for steam.
The arithmetic is decisive for CBG plant siting. A 10 tonne-per-day CBG plant needs roughly 3,650 tonnes of dry biomass per year, equivalent to 25 hectares of Napier grass at 30 t DM/ha/yr, 700 hectares of paddy at 5 t straw/ha/yr, or some combination. Methane yield per hectare layered onto this — Napier at 7,500–9,000 Nm3 CH4/ha/yr against paddy straw at 800–1,400 Nm3 CH4/ha/yr — explains why developers prefer captive plantations over residue aggregation despite the higher direct cost. ICAR's All India Coordinated Research Projects, state agricultural universities, and the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education publish authoritative t/ha/yr databases for every major crop and zone.
Common questions about tonnes/hectare/year
Plain-English answers to what people most often ask.
What is the difference between fresh weight and dry matter yield in t/ha/yr?
How does yield in t/ha/yr relate to biogas output?
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