Common Experimental Designs and Layout of Experiments

After discussing the fundamentals of experimentation in Chap. 8 , we present common designs in agricultural experiments. We first cover three basic designs: completely randomized design (CRD), randomized complete block design (RCBD), and Latin square design (LSD), followed by factorial and split-plot experiments. In each of the designs and experiments, characteristics of the design are described, and examples are presented. In addition, a generic analysis of variance (ANOVA) table is shown to illustrate how data is analyzed by partitioning in each design. The advantages and disadvantages of each of the designs are also outlined. The second section of the Chapter tackles the designing and laying out of the experiments, presenting ten steps in the planning phase, plus a detailed presentation of how to implement an agronomy-based experiment.