  Building on recent work in SU(N) Yang-Mills theory, we construct a manifestly
gauge invariant exact renormalization group for QCD. A gauge invariant cutoff
is constructed by embedding the physical gauge theory in a spontaneously broken
SU(N|N) gauge theory, regularized by covariant higher derivatives.
Intriguingly, the construction is most efficient if the number of flavours is a
multiple of the number of colours. The formalism is illustrated with a very
compact calculation of the one-loop beta function, achieving a manifestly
universal result and without fixing the gauge.
