EVALUATION OF THE COEFFICIENT OF VARIATIO N AS A MEASURE OF PRECISIONTO THE EXPERIMENTS WITH CITRUS

The present study was developed with values of coefficients of variati on (CV) taken from various works published in Brazil, with emphasis on fruit culture, and their variables most currently studied (height and fruit production per plant; diameter and fruit weight; yield, pH, ''r atio'', soluble solids and juice acidity). The objective was to propos e CV bands which orient the researcher in the evaluation of each varia ble. After data grouping, a test of normality of Lilliefors was made, which revealed that all the variables utilized had an approximately no rmal distribution. With this, by means of a table based on work with f orest species which establishes the medium and the standard deviation [CV+/-root Var(CV)], a table was constructed with suggested intervals of CV for each variable in question. The number of fruits per plant va riable was that which presented larger coefficient values, and the val ues related to the juice (obtained in the laboratory) were those which generally presented the smaller CV.