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Study aims to put better agronomic information in farmers’ hands

Date posted: February 12, 2002

Sophisticated agronomic information has become the backbone of successful on-farm decision making, but the high cost of studies to produce this data means farmers often don’t get all the information they need.

A new, two-year study at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Indian Head plans to remedy this problem by making research plot designs more cost efficient. Dr. Guy Lafond and his team will look for ways to reduce the amount of labor and land needed for multi-factor, multi-site agronomic experiments. This will make these experiments more precise, giving farmers more information to support their production strategies. Lafond’s study is supported in part by the Endowment Fund, administered by Western Grains Research Foundation.

“Successful crop production is becoming very knowledge-intensive and farmers require answers to complex questions to support decision making,” says Lafond. “We need to investigate more efficient field plot designs in order to get a better understanding of the relative performance of all important agronomic factors on overall productivity and economic performance.”

Many agronomic experiments focus on only one or two agronomic factors, which limits the basis for economic evaluations, says Lafond. “This approach provides simple answers, however, it does not account for the influence of other important factors that can impact on the entire cropping system.”

The cost of labor and land to implement large multi-factor experiments at multiple sites across Western Canada is often prohibitive, he says. But new research plot designs may allow researchers to get the same results using less land and fewer experimental units.

Lafond’s team will analyze the designs of recent multi-factor agronomic experiments and look for ways to reduce the number of experimental units. They will then develop designs that retain adequate statistical power but feature reduced block sizes and fewer replications. Advances in statistical software have made these improvements easier to design and analyze, he says.

Western Grains Research Foundation’s Endowment Fund has contributed over $17 million to nearly 200 crop research projects in Western Canada since its inception in 1983.