Screening new strains sugarcane by augmented block design and randomized complete block design

Abstract

Of the three pillars in which the Kenya vision 2030 is anchored, agriculture is a key sector. Over the past few years the challenges to sugar production i.e. the choice of the variety to plant, soil nutrients variation and market competition amongst others have greatly affected sugar production. This project has effectively and efficiently employed the technique of experimental design to ascertain family selection by comparing augmented block designs and Randomized complete block designs.The augmented block design is widely used in breeding programs, particularly in screening and selection of large number of germ-plasm lines with non- replicated test treatments and replicated control treatments to estimate the experimental errors. The study establishes a relationship between augmented block designs in screening and completely randomized block design in screening new strains of Sugarcane. The data used in this study were generated from IASRI resource server. In the two designs analyzed, we consider 5 test treatments and 2 control treatments for augment design and the same number of treatments for Randomized Complete Block Design. In the event of screening new sugarcane varieties, attempts were made to find the effectiveness of augmented block designs (ABD) and completely randomized block designs (R.C.B.D) in test families vs. control checks where the results reveal that Augmented Block Design is 11.86 times more efficient than a RCBD in standard error cij=N(O,l)and drops through to 1.8lfor error term cij=N(O,25). In the conclusion of this study in chapter five, we have shown that Augmented Block Design is better suited when the plots are limited and Randomized Complete Block Design is better suited when treatments are many.