Determination of sample size in polyembryonic citrus seeds using robust methods
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29312/remexca.v17i2.4247Keywords:
apomixis, citrus, maximum distance method, nonparametric bootstrapAbstract
The percentage of polyembryonic seeds and the number of embryos per seed (NE) are variables commonly used to estimate the degree of polyembryony in citrus, a characteristic used as an indicator of clonal or vegetative propagation of selected genotypes. However, many studies omit the description of the methods used to determine the appropriate sample size in the quantification of these variables. The purpose of this work was to propose a robust statistical methodology for calculating the optimal sample size in polyembryonic studies in citrus using the maximum distance method and the F-test. Five citrus genotypes (C-35 citrange, Volkamer lemon, Amblicarpa mandarin, Valencia orange and Mineola tangelo) were evaluated over two harvest cycles (2020 and 2021) by counting the number of embryos in 100 seeds per genotype. Since the variable of the number of embryos per seed was not normally distributed, the maximum distance method was applied using coefficients of variation calculated with the winsorized mean and a nonparametric bootstrap procedure. The results indicated optimal sample sizes of 26 to 28 seeds, with coefficients of variation of 6% to 11%, depending on the genotype. It was concluded that, for the genotypes evaluated, analyzing samples of up to 50 seeds is sufficient to estimate the degree of polyembryony accurately.
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