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CSITC to start Third Round Trials in January 2009
Source: International Cotton Advisory Committee Date: 2008-12-03
| The ICAC Task Force on Commercial Standardization of Instrument Testing of Cotton (CSITC) announces the start of the third Round Trials in January of 2009. Participation in a CSITC Round Trial is not limited to test centers using Uster HVI equipment. CSITC evaluations are based on test results and are not dependent on the manufacturer, model or kind of testing instruments used. The purpose of these trials is to encourage standardization in cotton instrument testing to promote efficiency in cotton production and marketing, and to help participating cotton test centers to ensure that their results be on the same level as other test centers around the world. Test centers enrolled in the trials will receive detailed information about their results to enable them to improve performance. Round trial results for each test center will not be reported to the public, but overall results for the round trials as a whole will be published. The round trials are conducted four times a year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture will ship a set of cotton samples before each trial to participating test centers with instructions to test the cotton six times each day for five days for length, uniformity index, micronaire, strength, reflectance and yellowness, for a total of 150 tests, and will collect the results. These results will be forwarded to the Fiber Institute of Bremen, Germany, who will analyze them and send evaluations to individual test centers. Benefits of Participation Participants in the CSITC Round Trials will benefit from detailed feedback that can be utilized to demonstrate measurement performance to customers and to address measurement related problems. Results will confirm the participant's ability to provide reproducible test measurements that are based on the established international standard. In addition, participation is a recommended practice for fulfilling quality management requirements in laboratories. The CSITC Round Trials complement, but do not replace, the Bremen Cotton Round Trial and the USDA HVI Checktest. The round trials are subsidized by the United States Department of Agriculture, the Fiber Institute of Bremen, Germany, and the ICAC Secretariat. Support is also received from the Common Fund for Commodities and the European Commission through the CFC/ICAC/33 project, but a nominal fee has to be charged to cover expenses associated with sample distribution. | ||
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