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Abstract: The principles of the design of experiments as developed by statisticians in the past forty years are now widely used in scientific research. Lambert (9) and Edwards (5 and 6) discussed the application of these principles to mushroom research, and our work has followed on from theirs. In the past four years we have been investigating methods of mushroom experimentation at Littlehampton, and in this paper we give our present ideas of what is good experimental practice. Although we are most concerned with the problems of experimentation at a research institute we believe that the commercial grower would gain much from the conduct of simple, properly designed experiments. Heath (8), when discussing the education of horticulture students, put forward an argument for the greater use of experimentation in commercial horticulture. He wrote "horticulture is stimulated to rapid change owing to the flood of new devices and chemicals, some of them based on good research either by the firms themselves or the universities and government laboratories, others based on less secure grounds. The only way of getting reliable information about the new methods reasonably quickly is by properly designed experiments." We have therefore kept in mind not only the research worker, but also the commercial grower who wishes to carry out experiments for himself. A detailed account of our investigations is to be published elsewhere, so we present conclusions in this paper rather than extensive evidence. Some of the suggestions we make are matters of opinion and are not based directly on investigations; we hope we shall make clear when this is so.
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