ICAC Completes 20th CSITC Round Trials

By Jim.Robinson|January 12, 2012

The International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) has completed its 20th Round Trial of cotton samples.

The 20th Round Trial under the auspices of the Task Force on Commercial Standardization of Instrument Testing of Cotton (CSITC RT 2011-3) was conducted from October to December 2011. During the 20th Round Trial, 80 testing facilities from all continents submitted results from 137 instruments – again an all-time high number of participants.

As the CFC/ICAC/33 Project on Commercial Standardization of Instrument Testing is ending, the CSITC Round Trials will be conducted without public funding from 2012 on.

Each round trial consists of five samples prepared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and sent to participating laboratories. Each sample is tested in each laboratory six times a day for five days for all six CSITC parameters of micronaire, length, length uniformity, strength, Rd and +b, resulting in a total of 900 measurements from each instrument. Results are downloaded electronically and sent to the Bremen Fiber Institute for evaluation. Because of the large number of observations over a five-day period, the resulting pattern of results can be used for detailed diagnostic evaluation.

Laboratories are not given grades or pass/fail results, and all results are confidential. The purpose of CSITC round trials are to facilitate improvements in both accuracy and precision among cotton testing laboratories around the world.