ESTIMATION OF LEAF AREA OF Erythroxylum citrifolium FROM LINEAR LEAF DIMENSIONS

Erythroxylum citrifolium is a neotropical plant species recorded in all regions of Brazil. Determining leaf area is of fundamental importance to studies related to plant propagation and growth. The objective was to obtain an equation to estimate the leaf area of E. citrifolium from linear dimensions of the leaf blade (length and width). A total of 200 leaf blades were collected in Parque Estadual Mata do Pau-Ferro in the municipality of Areia, state of Paraiba, Northeast Brazil. The models evaluated were: linear, linear without intercept, quadratic, cubic, power and exponential. The best model was determined by the criteria of: high coefficient of determination (R-2), low root mean square error (RMSE), low Akaike information criterion (AIC), high Willmott concordance index (d) and a BIAS index close to zero. All of the models constructed satisfactorily estimated the leaf area of E. citrifolium, with coefficients of determination above 0.9050, but the power model using the product between length and width (L*W) (y) over cap = 0.5966 * LW1.0181 was the best, with the highest values of R-2 and d, low values of RMSE and AIC, and a BIAS index closest to zero.