FieldManagementFactors
Field management factors are used to track management practices applied to specific plots in a field trial. Currently field management factors are user defined, though a controlled vocabulary is ideal; for example, the researcher can specify a specific fertilizer application names ‘01/01/2018 AX 4kg 10N20P50K’ or can define a weeding treatment called ‘01/02/2018 Hoe Weeding’ and then assign that treatment onto specific plots in their field trial. There are three ways to add field management factors onto a field trial in Breedbase.
The first way to add a field management factor is during the trial design process in Breedbase, as was mentioned above in the field trial section. During this process, during the review phase prior to saving the field trial into Breedbase, there is an interactive interface for naming field management factors and assigning plot entries to the field management factors.
The second way is during upload of a field trial into Breedbase, as was mentioned above in the field trial section. During upload of a field trial into Breedbase it is possible to include additional columns in the Excel spreadsheet naming the field management factors; then for each plot that the factor is applied to, a 1 is placed in the cell corresponding the the plot and the field management factor. If the cell is empty, then the field management factor was not applied to that plot.
The third way is by going to the trial detail page of a field trial in Breedbase. There is an interactive interface for naming field management factors and applying them to plot in the field trial. This way can be used at any time on any field trial in Breedbase.
A field management factor is stored as an entry in the project table with connection to the field trial project entry via the project_relationship table using the type name ‘trial_treatment_relationship’ from the ‘project_relationship’ controlled vocabulary. The field management factor is created with an nd_experiment entry linked via the nd_experiment_project table; the nd_experiment entry has the type name ‘treatment_experiment’ from the ‘experiment_type’ controlled vocabulary. The corresponding plot stock entries are linked to this nd_experiment entry via the nd_experiment_stock table.
