The 15th Round Trial under the auspices of the Task Force on Commercial Standardization of Instrument Testing of Cotton (CSITC RT 2010-3) was conducted from July to September 2010. Seventy-seven testing laboratories with 123 instruments participated, by far the highest number of instruments in the history of the Round Trials.
The typical inter-laboratory variations achieved by instrument testing, given as standard deviations, were:
CSITC RT 2010-3
Although the conditions are varying from Round Trial to Round Trial, the inter-laboratory variations achieved with participating instruments are very consistent. Unfortunately the Color results show that with the increasing number of participants, variation has slightly increased.
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 0.23 to 2.08 (a score of zero would be perfect), and the median overall evaluation of combined properties was 0.55.