An experiment is a scientific test used in plant/animal breeding for the main purpose of quantifying the phenotypic response of different germplasm in at least one environment. A properly designed and randomized experiment can be analyzed and interpreted statistically. The BI definition of experiment stretches the concept of experiment to include non-randomized environments where germplasm is grown for purposes other than detecting statistical differences – like crossing blocks or seed increase nurseries.
Please note that germplasm and ontology must be uploaded into DeltaBreed before you attempt to upload experiments, observations or sample submissions.
Therefore, you must know how to upload germplasm and ontology before you attempt to upload any sort of experiment or observations. This is because the system validation for experiments & observations is based on using ontology terms and germplasm that have been assigned a GID in DeltaBreed.
If you have not reviewed these previous training modules, return to the main training page and go through those modules before you return to this one.
In this training module you will learn how to:
Use the experiments & observations template.
Upload a file into DeltaBreed.
Download a file out of DeltaBreed, append observations and upload back into DeltaBreed.
If you wish to have a multi-environment experiment to analyze the adaptability of germplasm to multiple environments, you must plan this from the start when filling out the experiment & observations template. If this is not planned, your results could be confounded by other factors when you attempt to interpret the data.
Users can however add new environments to a DeltaBreed experiment at any time. Users may want to do this to:
Modify the list of germplasm under evaluation in an experiment, such as when dead plants are replaced with live.
Create environments to subset observations on long-lived organisms.
Head to the next training module Genotype Sample Submission.