Planning agricultural trials and evaluating their precision is important in determining the credibility of the results obtained from the research. There are various methods for estimating optimum plot size and various statistics used to measure precision. Selective precision has been cited recently as being an adequate measurement for evaluating experimental precision. The aim of this study is to propose a modification in the way the optimum plot size is estimated, related to the variability of the experimental area and prefixed selective precision. The method was applied to a set of six trials with potatoes. The optimum plot size, which was estimated on the basis of the relation between the variation coefficients and different plot sizes, can be estimated by considering simultaneously and in a prefixed way, the number of replications and the selective precision related to the treatments that are being evaluated. The optimum plot size for potato varies between four and thirteen hills, depending on the number of repetitions and the selective precision that will be used.
measurements of precision; experimental planning; plot size
