Basic experimental concepts for testing management options in truffle orchards with Mark Coleman and Shannon Berch
Truffle growers have a lot of ideas and information available on management practices necessary to produce truffles. Sometimes ideas conflict, it is not clear what level of a treatment is most effective, or you have an off-the-wall idea to try. We can test our ideas and decide which practices work best using basic experimental methods. This webinar reviews those methods and encourages the sharing of results to help us all learn. The discussion will include how to use controlled experiments to test approaches or ideas, i.e., your hypothesis, and consider different types of variables, experimental subjects, replication, controls, and how to decide if observed responses are meaningful. We will also consider some essentials that make it easy to document the justification, approach, and results of your test. Beyond these basic requirements, understanding basic experimental practices is essential to successfully host meaningful research conducted by truffle scientists.
