t-designs involving treatment combinations for animal experimentation

Abstract

Small and marginal farmers in India prefer an Integrated Farming System (IFS) approach i.e. a mixture of crop and livestock that enables them to maintain a stable income throughout the year. Identifying the best location-specific t-component crop-livestock combination to generate maximum profit is the major concern. t-designs can play a vital role in bringing out those best combinations. However, in many situations, combinations derived from specific components may not be practically feasible in a certain locality. Partially balanced t-designs with few selected combinations may prove to be useful in such situations. t-designs are special type of partially balanced incomplete block (PBIB) designs with some additional properties. Here, two series of partially balanced t-designs with some interesting characterization properties have been obtained by using the triangular association scheme. These designs find high application potential in crop and animal experimentation, especially in IFS research involving both crop and livestock components.