A prototype of the much-anticipated Pasture Profit Index (PPI) for perennial ryegrass was launched this week in Clonakilty, Co Cork.

The index has been developed by Teagasc and the Department of Agriculture. So far, only 16 of the varieties on the Department’s recommended list have a PPI and how exactly the index will be published and used by farmers is yet to be decided.

In future, the index will improve with better information in 2015 and 2016, and will include reliability.

The purpose of the index is to assist grassland farmers to identify the best grasses for their farm.

The index is similar to the Economic Breeding Index (EBI). Grasses will be ranked in order of euro of profit per hectare (See Table 1).

The profit for the current 16 varieties ranges from €226 per hectare to €8 per hectare. Again, similar to the EBI, the PPI has a number of sub-indexes, allowing the farmer to select between varieties for the trait most important to the farm completing the reseeding.

The sub-indexes are dry matter yield (which is broken down into spring, mid-season and autumn), grass quality, silage and persistency.

The new index can only be created for varieties that have frequent cutting data from the Department’s grass variety evaluation, which only started in 2010, to better replicate grazing, Hence not all varieties have this information just yet.

A number of consultation meetings with stakeholders in the industry have been independently chaired by Dr Brian Wickham.