Overview and Objectives

When planning any science research project to gain information for a particular goal or objective, much thought is placed into what is called the experimental design or layout of the experiment. This is important to ensure the researcher is able to obtain useful data which can later be analyzed and provide information as to whether or not the scientific hypothesis being tested is supported or rejected. In this eLesson series, we will look at a plant breeding experiment which uses the Augmented Design and utilize tools in R to analyze the data.

After completing this lesson, you will be able to :

1. Apply concepts of R programming for data preparation and analysis in a plant breeding experiment using an augmented design.
2. Define a certain parameter as a fixed effects parameter or as random effects parameter.
3. Formulate the underlying linear model in R and fit a linear mixed model in R.
4. Utilize Computational Thinking as a fundamental skill for problem-solving process using a real world problem from the field of agronomy/plant breeding.