NTEP takes action on TurfGrass Trends article

On page one of last month's TurfGrass TRENDS (September 2001), we featured an article written by Doug Brede on the National Turfgrass Evaluation Program (NTEP) testing program.

This map (chart) illustrates the percent predictability of individual state/province quality results versus NTEP's Grand Turfgrass

At the same time the article was going through the review and editing processes for this newsletter, the author sent several key components of that article to the NTEP Policy Board for its review. In the piece, Brede noted that most people who use NTEP data rely heavily on the single column of Grand Mean averages for recommendations. He questioned whether that is the right thing to do. He noted that there are idiosyncrasies hidden within the statistics that may paint a misleading picture of the data.

Based on the facts in that article, the Board voted to do away with the National Average column in NTEP data reports. Although the National Average column has been around since 1980, the Board agreed with Brede's contention that it no longer is useful to the majority of seed buyers.

Instead, NTEP results are going to focus on regional averages, which are more realistic and should be more meaningful to the user.

Brede has a long association with NTEP, dating back to 1979 when he attended the planning meeting at Rutgers University to establish the initial protocols for NTEP. Even before that time, he was an evaluator for Penn State University's plots of Project NE-57, which was the precursor of the modern NTEP trial. Brede was an evaluator and host site for NTEP trials from 1980 (NTEP's inception) until 1994, when trials at private companies were discontinued. He served on NTEP's Policy Committee from 1997 to 1999.

We would expect NTEP's Policy Board to revisit the issue when the Board meets again in February.

Thanks to everyone involved: to Doug Brede for a good article, to NTEP's Policy Board for giving his recommendations a fair hearing and then acting upon them, and to you, the subscriber, for making TGT the "go-to" forum for such leading-edge information on our industry.

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