History of the Statistical Design of Agricultural Experiments

In Section 1 the approach of improving crop yields by the development of agriculture and addition of various mineral or organic substances in the last 200-300 years is investigated. In Section 2 the principle of randomized experiments is treated. Section 3 describes the variety trials of field crops. The elimination of effects in two dimensions is shown in Section 4 on Row-Column designs. Fertilizer trials are treated in Section 5 (qualitative factors) and in Section 6 (quantitative factors). Field trials with spatial analysis are discussed in Section 7. In Section 8 remarks on analysis and optimal experimental design are made. Supplementary materials accompanying this paper appear on-line