Web generation of experimental designs balanced for indirect effects of treatments (WEB-DBIE)

Abstract

Indirect effects are effects that occur in an experiment due to the units which are adjacent (spatially or temporally) to the unit being observed. Spatial indirect effects arise due to the treatments applied to the adjacent neighbouring units/plots and the designs so developed are called Neighbour Balanced Designs (NBDs). Whereas temporal indirect effects occur because of the carryover or residual effects in the periods following the periods of their direct application and the designs considering temporal effects are called Crossover Designs. A large number of such designs have been developed in the literature. For ready referencing and potential use of these designs, online software for generation of randomized layout of these designs is highly desirable. This paper describes the development of a web solution for generation of NBDs and Crossover Designs using client–server architecture along with an online catalogue of the designs within a permissible range. Designs generated through this software have wide applications in agricultural experiments, forestry and agro-forestry trials, polycross nurseries, serological experiments, animal nutritional trials, sensory evaluations, clinical trials, etc. WEB-DBIE is accessible any time from arbitrary platforms through internet. This software provides freely available solution for the researchers and students working in this area.