Experimental precision in competition trials of common beans and maize

Abstract

The objective of this study was to evaluate the experimental precision and the magnitude of least
significant difference (LSD) from Tukey’s test as percentage of the experiment mean for the competition trials of common beans and maize in Santa Catarina, Brazil. One hundred and thirty-eight trials with beans and 325
trials with maize hybrids were catalogued. All trials were conducted in completely randomized blocks, with 4 replications and 20 to 26 cultivars for common beans, and 2 to 4 replications and 5 to 49 maize cultivars. The coefficient of variation was lower than 20% (aceptable limit by the legislation) in 84,1% and 95,4% of the experiments with common beans and maize, respectively. However, the LSDs presented great magnitudes in the majority of the trials, a worrisome fact because the majority of common beans and maize cultivars already reached
high level of productivity with low differences among them. Because of this, some practices are necessary to reduce the least significant difference among the average of cultivars.