Statistical properties of chlorophyll fluorescence induction parameters

Abstract

Parameters of the fast chlorophyll (Chl) fluorescence induction (the O-J-I-P curve) of plants of winter wheat grown in the field canopy were statistically tested for Gaussian distribution. Five different statistical methods showed that the obtained values did not obey the Gaussian distribution law. The presentation of the parameters with the help of the mean and standard deviation masks the information about statistical properties of the values. Thus, we recommend to present the parameters by means of median, quartiles, and minimum and maximum values rather than by means of the mean and standard deviation.