Measurement of Hard Vitreous Kernels in Durum Wheat by Machine Vision

Abstract

Cereal Chem. 80(5):511-517An imaging method that detects nonvitreous regions in sound kernels of durum wheat at high speed is described. Kernels are analyzed simultaneously for individual vitreousness and individual kernel size and shape are measured concurrently. The measurement of 500 kernels per sample is adequate for highly reproducible results. Significant agreement was found between inspector-determined hard vitreous kernel percentages (HVK) and machine-determined HVK scores for export cargo samples of Canadian Western Amber Durum (CWAD), with differences between the two methods of typically ±3%. For railcar samples of CWAD taken on delivery to the terminal, agreement between inspector-determined and machine-determined HVK scores were more variable. The variability between the two methods generally increased as the HVK score of the sample became lower. For inspector-determined HVK scores of <50%, difference between inspector and machine HVK scores for some samples was substantial. Such large differences are partially attributable to the way in which weathered kernels are assessed. Weather-damaged kernels were frequently classified as nonvitreous by the machine system due to disruption of the enveloping tissues, whereas inspector evaluations often classify weather-damaged kernels as vitreous. The speed, accuracy, and reproducibility of the machine methodology gives it enormous potential as a replacement for visual inspection of CWAD for HVK in Canadian grain terminals.

Characterization of the desiccation of wheat kernels by multivariate imaging

“…The great potential of machine vision to assess the physical properties of grains was demonstrated with respect to characterizing the vitreousness of wheat (Shatadal et al 1998) and endosperm hardness (Konopka et al 2005). The degree of vitreousness of durum wheat was also examined by Symons et al (2003), with the help of machine vision. The results were well correlated with those of human inspection.…”

3D-front-face fluorescence spectroscopy and independent components analysis: A new way to monitor bread dough development

“…As indicated by many several authors, the fluorescence in Region 2 (excitation near 360 nm and emission near 420 nm) can be ascribed to the presence of ferulic acid in wheat milling fractions [18,19,24]. Obviously, the addition of ferulic acid in the dough recipes causes an increase of fluorescence in this region (dough f, fg, fG and fgG).…”

“…Thus, gluten proteins through their contents in tyrosine and tryptophan residues, ferulic acid and possibly tocopherols, glycoflavones and riboflavine have been characterized as fluorescent compounds [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. To our knowledge, the only studies devoted to the dough fluorescence properties have been carried out by Bonomi et al [27], Hushka et al [28] Kokawa et al [29,30].…”

A Study of Puroindoline b Gene Involvement in the Milling Behavior of Hard‐Type Common Wheats

“…Indeed, temperature and light intensity during grain filling and the rate of grain drying (Parish and Halse 1968) were pointed out as affecting another characteristic of the endosperm texture known as vitreousness. Differences in vitreousness could be determined visually by the level of translucence or through newly developed methods such as a machine vision (Symons et al 2003) or dual energy X-ray imaging (Neethirajan et al 2007), as demonstrated with durum wheats.…”