PastureBase Ireland: a grassland decision support system and national database
Open accessAbstract
PastureBase Ireland (PBI) is a web-based grassland management application incorporating a dual function of grassland decision support and a centralized national database to collate commercial farm grassland data. This database facilitates the collection and storage of vast quantities of grassland data from grassland farmers. The database spans across ruminant grassland enterprises – dairy, beef and sheep. To help farmers determine appropriate actions around grassland management, we have developed this data informed decision support tool to function at the paddock level. Individual farmers enter data through the completion of regular pasture cover estimations across the farm, allowing the performance of individual paddocks to be evaluated within and across years. To evaluate the PBI system, we compared actual pasture cut experimental data (Etesia cuts) to PBI calculated outputs. We examined three comparisons, comparing PBI outputs to actual pasture cut data, for individual DM yields at defoliation (Comparison 1), for cumulative annual DM yields including silage data (Comparison 2) and, for cumulative annual DM yields excluding silage data (Comparison 3). We found an acceptable accuracy between PBI outputs and pasture cut data when statistically analyzed using relative prediction error and concordance correlation coefficients for the measurement of total annual DM yield (Comparison 2), with a relative prediction error of 15.4% and a concordance correlation coefficient of 0.85. We demonstrated an application of the PBI system through analysis of commercial farm data across two years (2014–2015) for 75 commercial farms who actively use the system. The analysis showed there was a significant increase in DM yield from 2014 to 2015. The results indicated a greater variation in pasture growth across paddocks within farms than across farms.
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Many factors influencing grass production and utilisation are outside the farmer's direct control, such as weather and agronomic conditions.
“A potential explanation for this insignificant finding is that many factors influencing grass production and utilisation are outside of the farmer's direct control, such as weather and agronomic conditions (Hanrahan et al., 2017).”
From Extension and management pathways for enhanced farm sustainability: evidence from Irish dairy farms (2023) · cites this paper as Hanrahan et al., 2017
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The Irish dairy industry – recent history and strategy, current state and future challenges
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“In the case of PBI, pastureland farmers are the citizen scientists collecting the pastureland data which is the data fuelling a new research program.”
BackgroundInfluentialExtension and management pathways for enhanced farm sustainability: evidence from Irish dairy farms
Balaine, L., Läpple, D., Dillon, E. J., & Buckley, C. (2023) · European Review of Agricultural Economics · doi:10.1093/erae/jbac033 · Cited by 18 · see citing works
- Authors
- Hanrahan, L., Geoghegan, A., O'Donovan, M., Griffith, V., Ruelle, E., Wallace, M., & Shalloo, L.
- Affiliations
- University College Dublin (IE)
- Teagasc - The Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority (IE)
- Corresponding author
- Hanrahan, Liam
- Venue
- Computers and Electronics in Agriculture
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2017-04
- Volume
- 136
- Pages
- 193-201
- ISSN
- 0168-1699 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2914305340
- Cited by
- 151
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 27 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 2
- FWCI
- 34.91
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Computers and Electronics in Agriculture (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Arrow@dit (Dublin Institute of Technology) (acceptedVersion)
- T-Stór (Teagasc) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Arrow@dit (Dublin Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- T-Stór (Teagasc) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Newcastle University ePrints (Newcastle Univesity) (cc-by-nc-nd)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Forestry › Pasture and Agricultural Systems
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Plant Science › Smart Agriculture and AI
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Forestry › Agroforestry and silvopastoral systems
- Keywords
- grassland management, decision support system, dry matter yield, silage, dairy farms, beef cattle farms, sheep farms
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