Fisher's ideas and the design of field experiments in agronomy and plant breeding

R. A. Fisher was one of the greatest scientists of the last century. He made many ground-breaking contributions, so many indeed that it seems almost impossible to list all of them. His revolutionary contributions to the design of experiments can mostly be traced to the early part of his academic career, and they are inextricably linked to his involvement with agricultural field experiments at Rothamsted Experiment Station. In this talk I will review Fisher's key ideas on experimental design and relate them to some of the work I am involved in, most of which directly focuses on field experiments in agriculture. Topics covered include systematic designs, row-column designs, augmented row-column designs, multi-environment trials, partially replicated designs, optimal allocation of trials to zones in sub-divided target populations of environments, and the connection of trialling systems across countries.