Designing experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of precision agricultural practices on research fields: part 1: concepts for their formulation

A better method is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of precision agricultural practices on research farm fields. We present a novel methodology for formulating the design of an experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of precision agricultural practices. The method combines a georeferenced treatment structure and a georeferenced design structure to build a mixed model that describes and analyzes the site-specific experiment. One or more layers of georeferenced information (obtained by various remote-sensing systems) describing the topography of the research field and its crop attributes may be included as covariates in the mixed model. The concepts of this approach are illustrated through the use of a hypothetical field. Current limitations are also discussed.