The Results Are In: 18th CSITC Round Trial Completed

18th CSITC ROUND TRIAL COMPLETED

The 18th Round Trial under the auspices of the Task Force on Commercial Standardization of Instrument Testing of Cotton (CSITC RT 2011-2) was conducted from April to June 2011. Seventy-eight testing facilities from all continents participated in the Round Trial and submitted results from 123 instruments for evaluation.

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The typical inter-laboratory variations achieved by instrument testing, given as standard deviations, were:

CSITC RT 2011-2

Property Standard Deviation Standard Deviation
based on Single Tests based on 30 Tests/Sample

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Micronaire 0.076 mic 0.059 mic
Strength 1.17 g/tex 0.92 g/tex
Length 0.016 inches 0.011 inches
Length Unif. 0.78 units 0.52 units
Color Rd 1.15 units 1.25 units
Color +b 0.35 units 0.27 units

Laboratories are given an overall ranking, as well as rankings for performance on each of the six parameters. Results for each test center are confidential. Rankings are based on the results of each lab in coming closest to the mean (average) values for all laboratories participating in the Round Trial on all six parameters.

The range of scores for the combined properties among the 123 instruments was 0.22 to 2.49 (a score of zero would be perfect), and the median overall evaluation of combined properties was 0.54.

Besides the 6 parameters for ranking, an additional 4 parameters were included for information purposes: Short Fiber Index (SFI), Maturity, Trash Area and Trash Count. The inter-laboratory variations for the four additional parameters are higher than the variations for the 6 parameters approved by CSITC. Therefore, laboratories are not evaluated according to the extra four parameters.

During the last meeting of the CSITC Task Force it was decided that additional information will be provided to participating laboratories to enhance understanding of instrument performance. Beginning with Round Trial 2011-3, laboratories will also be informed as to what proportion of their test results are inside a given limit for each parameter. The information will be provided for each instrument and each property. With this, the testing facilities will get even more useful and practical information of use in improving testing performance.

Information about CSITC and overall Round Trial results (information for individual laboratories is confidential) is available at www.CSITC.org.

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