Because to the diversity of sample sizes used in performance evaluations of seed metering mechanisms, the objective of this study was to determine the sample size for laboratory experiments with horizontal plate and pneumatic seed meters, and treatment effects in the corn seed distribution. For this, experiment was conducted under laboratory conditions, according to the international standard ISO 7256/1. The treatments comprised a combination of four metering mechanisms (two pneumatic and two horizontal plate) with three sowing speeds, 0.7, 1.4 and 2.1 m s-1. Methods were used for determining the sample size, sampling intensity and adapted bootstrap. Regarding the distribution of seeds, the meter mechanisms studied show no differences in the regularity of distribution, quality dropped with increasing speed. Referring to the sample size, can be reduced to 103 seed spacing with error level of 5% of the sample mean for the corn, independent of seeding speed and metering system used.
precision seeders; acceptable index; bootstrap
