On the construction of trend resistant PBIB designs

In agricultural, animal, fisheries and industrial experimentation under block design setup, systematic trend may affect the response under consideration. Although remote, these effects may still have high influence on response and hence should be incorporated in the model for proper model specification. Completely trend resistant block designs, also known as trend free block designs, are an important class of designs where the analysis can be done in usual manner as in case of normal block designs since trend effects and treatment effects are orthogonal. Literature is available on different aspects of trend resistant incomplete block designs mainly focusing on balanced incomplete block designs. This article deals with the construction of completely trend resistant Partially Balanced Incomplete Block (TR-PBIB) designs. Two methods of constructing such designs have been discussed. The information matrices for the class of designs developed have been derived and SAS code for the generation of the developed designs has also been provided.