In the current situation, with the health, economic and financial crisis brought about by coronavirus, one can feel almost guilty for focusing on the mundane, run of the mill farming matters. But life is going on, despite the pandemic.

Not that the reseeding Focus would ever be mundane. Over the following pages you can read about the latest in grass seed variety selection, from the Pasture Profit Index (PPI) (pages 46 and 47) to the latest in the Teagasc trials on the on-farm monoculture study (pages 48 and 49). The introduction of the PPI and the establishment of the on-farm monoculture evaluation has been ground-breaking in terms of the information now available on a grass variety.

One can feel almost guilty for focusing on the mundane, run of the mill farming matters. But life is going on, despite the pandemic

Ten years ago, all you could go on when choosing a variety was the Recommended List. While OK for certain applications, it wasn’t designed around choosing top varieties for high performing and intensive grazing farms.

So which is more important, the PPI or the on-farm evaluation study? For me, one complements the other. Effectively, the on-farm work verifies that a top variety on the PPI is actually a top variety on farm. It’s a bit like milk recording verifying the predicted performance of a cow. The researchers have shown the correlation between the PPI and on-farm work is 0.77, so 77% of the difference between a variety in the on-farm evaluation is due to the PPI.

The on-farm work verifies that a top variety on the PPI is actually a top variety on farm

Of course, there are two parts to successful reseeding. The first is to pick the right variety and the second is to do the job of reseeding correctly. Stephen Connolly gives a full lowdown on how to carry out a successful reseeding project on pages 50 and 51. All too often we see or hear about a farmer skipping a step, or taking a short cut to save money while all that ends up happening is that the job is not as good as it could be, thereby reducing the return on investment. Don’t take short cuts with reseeding. See Stephen Robb’s update on sprays on page 46.