Non-destructive determination of the moisture content of individual wheat grains by nuclear magnetic resonance
1989
Chambers, J. | McKevitt, N.J. | Scudamore, K.A. | Bowman, C.E.
The non-destructive determination of the moisture content of wheat samples as small as an individual grain would have a range of uses whether for repeated measurements, as in physiological studies of development, or to allow subsequent analysis for other factors such as pesticide residues. However, no such method has yet been described. A suitable method has now been developed using an ordinary nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer. With a calibration set of 100 grains, the relationship between NMR response and oven moisture content (range 3.3 to 19.6%) was described by a full quadratic model with which there was no remaining lack of fit (1.465 ns), and the repeatability of the model was acceptable (standard estimate of error 0.9995). The quality of fit of the NMR predicted moisture content to the oven moisture content for three test sets each of 100 grains was also satisfactory (standard deviation of difference 0.973 to 1.352). Using two batches of 25 fumigated grains, the method has been used to show that the different amounts of residues of 1,1,1,-trichloroethane were not related to moisture content, as had been previously suggested.
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