Optimal Experimental Design of Field Trials using Differential Evolution
This work addresses the need for more efficient experimental design in agricultural field trials, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing optimization methods.
The paper tackles the problem of optimizing genotype allocation in field trials to account for field effects, proposing a model-based method using Differential Evolution that shows promising results in convergence and search space exploration compared to existing strategies.
When setting up field experiments, to test and compare a range of genotypes (e.g. maize hybrids), it is important to account for any possible field effect that may otherwise bias performance estimates of genotypes. To do so, we propose a model-based method aimed at optimizing the allocation of the tested genotypes and checks between fields and placement within field, according to their kinship. This task can be formulated as a combinatorial permutation-based problem. We used Differential Evolution concept to solve this problem. We then present results of optimal strategies for between-field and within-field placements of genotypes and compare them to existing optimization strategies, both in terms of convergence time and result quality. The new algorithm gives promising results in terms of convergence and search space exploration.