Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 March 2009
Experiments of balanced design in harvest years 1981 and 1982 were used to measure interactions between plots of winter barley with different amounts of leaf blotch, caused by the splash-dispersed pathogen Rhynchosporium secalis. On the appropriate transform scales (logarithms of counts and logits of percentages), the effects of extreme treatments on neighbouring plots were up to 30% of the effects of the same treatments on the plots to which they were applied. Powdery mildew (Erysiphe graminis f.sp. hordei) was commonly least severe in plots with most leaf blotch except soon after fungicide sprays had been applied which, although chosen to decrease leaf blotch, also had short-lived effects on mildew. Consequently, contrasts in mildew between differently treated plots changed sign during the season. The effects of the same treatments on neighbouring plots similarly changed with time but not necessarily in phase with their direct effects. Analyses of the rhynchosporium data that recognized the effects of neighbouring treatments typically had much smaller residual mean squares than analyses that ignored neighbour effects but assumed randomized block designs.
Treatments had mostly small effects on grain yield but these data from two of the experiments showed marked positional variation. Individual plots yields from one of these experiments, testing five treatments, are quoted in the appendix so that they are available to others with an interest in alternative methods, such as nearest-neighbour models, to adjust for local correlations between plots.