Principles of Experimental Design

1. An experiment is to be conducted to test the effect of water stress on 4 rice

varieties. The experiment will be conducted in water tanks. Two tanks will be
used. One tank will be for the stress treatment and the other for the well
watered. The proposed layout is as follows:

Stressed Well Watered

V2 V4 V3 V1 V2 V4
V1 V3 V2 V3 V1 V2
V3 V2 V1 V4 V3 V3
V4 V1 V4 V2 V4 V1
Rep 1 Rep 2 Rep 3 Rep 1 Rep 2 Rep 3
Is this a valid experiment?

2. A researcher conducted an experiment to test the effectiveness of 5 types of

insect spray in controlling rice bug. The experiment’s layout was as follows:

Treatment 2 Treatment 3 Treatment 5

Treatment 5 Treatment 1 Treatment 4
Treatment 1 Treatment 4 Treatment 2
Treatment 3 Treatment 2 Treatment 1
Treatment 4 Treatment 5 Treatment 3
Block 1 Block 2 Block 3

The treatments were applied using a knapsack sprayer. Unfortunately, the

researcher had only one knapsack sprayer. So what he did was to wash the
sprayer thoroughly then mixed Treatment 1. He sprayed all plots assigned to
Treatment 1 then washed the sprayer again thoroughly. He repeated these
steps using Treatment 2 up to Treatment 5. Please comment on the
researcher’s experimental procedure.

3. An experiment to test the effect of an isolate on 60 lines is being conducted in

the greenhouse with 4 replications. The layout is in attachment A. There are 4
technicians to help the researcher in the data collection. The researcher
assigned technician A to collect for pots 1-15, technician B for pots 16-30,
technician C for pots 31-45 and technician D for pots 46-60. Please comment
on this management practice.

Exercises for EDDA 1

 Attachment A

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Pot No.
31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

17 5 8 20 24 22 39 3 19 42 30 18 52 31 26 16 11 59 6 9 54 14 33 57 37 7 43 23 47 51
Rep 1
36 45 41 34 13 29 10 35 40 32 53 44 46 56 50 60 27 15 48 1 49 25 55 28 38 2 58 4 12 21

33 54 34 44 42 43 5 25 4 9 13 26 28 60 40 58 36 53 56 32 27 16 39 3 49 41 51 22 11 10
Rep 2
47 38 50 7 31 21 19 1 15 20 23 55 35 37 46 24 2 48 45 14 6 57 52 17 18 29 8 12 59 30

41 44 47 10 18 12 33 55 17 4 24 45 31 49 59 57 9 36 43 5 6 13 51 35 21 56 7 14 53 58
Rep 3
16 28 23 39 54 37 25 20 8 52 46 11 34 27 30 29 1 26 3 19 40 38 48 60 22 42 32 2 15 50

43 3 44 48 19 41 25 37 46 42 59 6 12 22 5 40 54 15 27 13 60 11 26 34 58 53 31 57 23 55
Rep 4
52 32 39 49 2 1 21 9 18 51 20 17 35 28 45 10 16 36 24 50 7 14 30 56 4 33 29 38 47 8

Layout of greenhouse experiment for number 2

Exercises for EDDA 2

Exercises for EDDA 3