Significance of Experimental Designs in Agricultural Research

Abstract

Experimentation is an integral component of almost every agricultural and other scientific endeavour. Properly designed experiments not only answer all the questions of the researcher but also make efficient use of available resources while doing so. Thus, careful and efficient designing of an experiment is both an art and science. It is a common phenomenon both in this country and abroad that experimenters are able to state the research problems clearly they are after, but are often unable to devise a suitable experiment because they are not sure which design to apply to conduct the experiment and even if s/he knows the design, then how to analyse the resulting data from such an experiment is another roadblock in the process. Thus, any form of a quick handy guidance to proper designing experiments and analysing data thereofe would be of immense benefit to the experimenters. The purpose of this manuscript is to expose the readers to some modern, sophisticated, efficient designs actually used by the agricultural researchers in conducting their experiments and also to introduce the readers to some useful web resources for generating layout of the designs and for analysing data from designed experiments. We have taken a case study approach for describing the designs. In other words, real life situations for conducting an experiment are described first and then a suitable design for the situation is suggested. We hope that this pocket diary will be immensely useful to the experimenters. Criticisms and suggestions for improvements are always welcome.