Foundational methods to design and conduct effective field trials
for plant research.
Athena Title
Research Methods Crops
Pre or Corequisite
BIOS 7010 or STAT 6315 or FANR 6750
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
Students will understand and apply the fundamental concepts of experimental design, including randomization, replication, and quality control.
Students will understand and utilize the statistical framework through which we analyze experiments, specifically including ANOVA analysis and linear regression with both fixed-effect and mixed-effect models.
Students will be able to demonstrate proficiency analyzing both common experimental designs (completely randomized, randomized complete block, strip-plot, lattice, augmented) and less common ones (Latin square, balanced incomplete block, moving complete block, etc.)
Students will be proficient with the R statistical language through in-class and at-home assignments, including the reading and writing of data, statistical manipulations, use of variables and functions, and graphical display.
Students will be able to perform a complete experimental analysis and present it clearly and succinctly to your peers, including all analysis steps, verbal and visual presentation, and peer review of others’ work.
Topical Outline
1. Research methods and design in crop science
a. Review of statistical concepts
b. Increasing the accuracy of experiments
c. Hypothesis testing
2. Type I and type II errors, p-value, choice of level of significance, the usefulness of a test
a. Design and analysis of single factor experiments
b. Completely randomized designs
c. Randomized complete block designs
d. Latin Square
3. Design and analysis of multiple factor experiments
a. Factorial treatment designs
b. Various experimental designs for factorial treatment designs
c. Confounding
d. Split-plot treatment designs
4. Split plot, strip plot, split-split plot
a. Incomplete block designs
b. Balanced incomplete block designs (BIBD)
c. Partially balanced incomplete block designs
d. Designs with a single rep for some treatments and multiple reps for checks
e. Lattice designs
f. Balanced square lattices
g. Partially balanced square lattices
h. Rectangular lattices
i. Lattice squares
j. Combining experiments - Analysis of results across locations and years
k. Repeated measures and crossover designs
l. Analysis across locations and years for forage experiments or perennial field crops (where arrangement of treatments in the field at a location remain constant across years; with and without multiple harvest each year)
Institutional Competencies
Analytical Thinking
The ability to reason, interpret, analyze, and solve problems from a wide array of authentic contexts.
