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Title: PROGRESS IN DEVELOPMENT OF FIELD SAMPLING METHODS FOR ESTIMATING COTTON LINT STICKINESS

Author
item Naranjo, Steven
item Henneberry, Thomas
item Chu, Chang Chi

Submitted to: Silverleaf Whitefly: 1997 Supplement to the Five Year National Research and
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/1/1997
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Research was conducted in 1995 in Maricopa, AZ to examine the distribution of sticky cotton lint, optimize the sample unit size, and determine the number of samples needed for the precise estimation of lint stickiness. Analyses of sampling distributions suggest that lint stickiness is uniformly to randomly distributed within cottonfields. This pattern differs markedly from the highly clumped distribution of Bemisia. Partitioning of variance components indicated that most of the variability is associated with differences between sample-unit in the field with very little variation between multiple thermodetector assays of the same sample-unit. Thus, it would be more efficient to allocate resources to collect more individual sample-units from the field rather than replicate thermodetector assays in the laboratory. There were no differences in the mean or variability of stickiness readings between the 6 sample units examined. Relative net precision declined dramatically with increasing size of the sample unit from 1 to 30 plants. A 1-plant sample unit would probably be most cost efficient, but the 2-plant sample unit was most highly correlated with stickiness readings from bulk harvest samples. Further analyses of the 2-plant sample unit suggest that a precision (SE/mean) of 0.10 or 0.25 could be achieved by collecting about 24 or 4 sample units per field. Field collection time would range from 5-30 minutes depending on the desired precision.