With the objective of verifying if different cultivars of soybean modify the estimates of the optimum plot size and of the numbers of replications, an experiment was conduced in the agriculturist year of 2000/01 in area pertaining to the Department of Crop Science in Santa Maria University Campus. Two cultivars of soybean were used (BRS 137 and Fepagro-RS10), conducted in a randomized block design with three replications. The size of plot was evaluated through the method of maximum modified bending. The test of parallelism of SEBER (1976), was used to verify the heterogeneousness of reply among tested cultivars. The number of replications was estimated through the described methodology for HATHEWAY (1961). It can be concluded that to cultivars studied the number of replications that confers an adequate accuracy is equal to seven and the optimum plot size is 3.96m².
optimum plot size; number of replications; soil and experimental material heterogeneity
