Soybean Mechanical Damage Detection

The sodium hypochlorite and indoxyl acetate tests were compared as methods for quantifying the mechanical damage of soybeans. These methods were selected from six described in the literature. Soybeans at 7 and 21% moisture content were damaged in a Stein Breakage Tester and the remaining whole soybeans were subjected to the two tests. Sodium hypochlorite indicates damage by causing soybeans with cracked hulls to swell whereas the indoxyl acetate test utilizes a dye to stain soybeans with scratched or cracked hulls. The indoxyl acetate test was found to be more sensitive, but the sodium hypochlorite test yielded more consistent data. The hypochlorite test was selected as a suitable test for soybean mechanical damage quantification

Design and development of a sweet potato digging device

This paper describes a study on the design, fabrication and testing of a prototype digging device for sweet potato tubers in bris soil. The soil texture was sandy soil (fine sand 94.53%), with mean moisture content of 9.16% and mean bulk density of 1.44 g-cm-3. The soil was prepared in a soil bin. Three types of soil digging tools were designed and fabricated to determine the optimum draft force. These were Flat or plane, V-shaped and Hoe type blades. Plane and V-shaped blades were 30 cm long, and 13 cm wide, while the Hoe type had three rods, 25 mm in diameter, 30 cm long and 6.5 cm wide with sharp cutting edge. The digging tools were tested in a soil bin filled with bris soil to determine the optimum draft force and area of soil disturbance. The results were analysed using statistical analysis of variance (ANOVA). Comparison between all blade types and blade depths to measured draft force and the area of soil disturbed showed that the highest draft of 0.54 kN-m-2 was caused by a flat or plane blade at the optimum depth of 20 cm when the area of soil disturbed was 0.180 m2. The V-shaped blade had the mean draft of 0.51 kN-m-2, with area of soil disturbance of 0.185 m2. The best choice was V-shaped blade with a rake angle of 30o at 20 cm. depth. The selected blade was fixed onto the sweet potato harvester and tested on bris soil planted with sweet potato of Telong and VitAto varieties. The harvesting efficiency of the machine in bris soil was 93.64% and 90.49% for Telong (Plot A) and VitAto (Plot B) varieties, respectively. The average ground speed and turning time during operation for plots A and B was 0.56 km-hr-1 and 102.7 s and 0.99 km-hr-1 and 81.22 s, respectively. The harvesting efficiencies for both plots showed no significant difference. The total productive time (harvesting time) and unproductive time (turning time) in plot A, at a tractor speed of 0.56 km.hr-1, was 14.8 hours for harvesting a hectare of sweet potato ( 0.068 ha.hr-1). In plot B, the total time for harvesting a hectare of sweet potato was 8.35 hours (0.12 ha.hr-1) at a tractor speed of 0.99 km.hr-1. The average harvesting time for both plots was 11.47 hr.ha-1. The average field work rate was 0.087 ha.hr-1 or 34 man-hr.ha-1 compared to manual harvesting of 150 man-hrs.ha-1

Atmospheric Pressure Cold Plasma (ACP) Treatment a New Technique to Improve Microstructure and Textural Properties of Healthy Noodles Fortified with Mango Flour

The effect of atmospheric pressure cold plasma (ACP) on microstructural, textural and sensory properties of healthy noodles fortified with mango flour was studied. Atmospheric pressure cold plasma was carried out using helium gas with a flow rate of 1000 ml/min at room temperature. The electrodes were powered by a direct current (DC) power supply voltage of 16.6 kV wrapped around the quartz glass tube to develop plasma plume. SEM for microstructural observation was done to study the changes in surface morphology of plasma treated noodles. It was observed that after the plasma treatment the gluten and fiber content on the noodles surface more coherent and smoother between gluten network and starch granules than the control with respect to plasma power and time of treatment. Atmospheric pressure cold plasma treatment maintained the hardness, springiness and gumminess of control noodles without mango flour (CNT) and noodles fortified with mango flour (NMFT) significantly (P<0.05) compared to untreated control noodles (CN) and untreated mango flour fortified noodles (NMF). The results suggest that ACP is an effective technique for enhancing the gluten strength and improving the qualities of noodles fortified with mango flour

Carbon Dioxide Evolution from Fresh and Preserved Soybeans

Carbon dioxide evolution has proven to be a good indicator of deterioration in studies of stored cereal grains and oilseeds. Since little work has been done with stored soybeans, a study was conducted measuring carbon dioxide from stored soybeans using freshly harvested and preserved soybean samples. The objective of the study was to determine the effects of harvesting method, storage temperature, storage moisture content, and storage time on soybean deterioration. Following storage treatment, samples were held under aeration in a respirometer at 26°C and 21% moisture, and evolved carbon dioxide mass was measured until samples had lost 1.0% of original dry matter. At high harvest moistures, combine-harvested soybeans deteriorated faster, but at low harvest moistures, the deterioration rate of hand-harvested soybeans was greater. After 48 weeks of storage, the soybeans harvested at 22% moisture and preserved at -18°C deteriorated in a respirometer like freshly harvested soybeans, but soybeans harvested at 9% deteriorated in a respirometer significantly faster than those freshly harvested at 13% moisture

Preservative Effects of Iprodione on Shelled Corn

Laboratory tests were conducted to determine preservative effects of iprodione (Rovral®) fungicide on shelled corn. One-kilogram corn samples were held at 20°C, and 18.0, 22.5, and 23.5% moisture while being aerated at 0.45 m3/min-Mg (0.4 cfm/bu). Time required for the samples to lose 0.5% of original dry matter was used as the criterion of preservative effectiveness. Application of 20 ppm of iprodione extended this time 21% for 18% moisture corn and 13% for 22.5% corn. Effectiveness of iprodione increases with application rate up to 100 ppm where storage time is extended about 25%. A higher application rate had little added effect. The 3.29 mL/kg (3 oz/bu) fungicide solution rate is more effective than the 5.48 mL/kg (5 oz/bu) rate. Non-uniform application of iprodione did not decrease preservative effectiveness if the same total quantity of fungicide was applied. Damaged kernel totals after storage tests were higher for 22.5% moisture samples, compared to 13% moisture samples, but were not affected by iprodione treatment

Rice Seed Varieties Identification based on Extracted Colour Features using Image Processing and Artificial Neural Network (ANN)

Determination of rice seed varieties is very important to ensure varietal purity in the production of high-quality seed. To date, manual seed inspection is carried out to separate foreign rice seed varieties in rice seed sample in the laboratory as there is lack of an automatic seed classification system.  This paper describes a simple approach of using image processing technique and artificial neural network (ANN) to determine rice seed varieties based on extracted colour features of individual seed images. The experiment was conducted using 200 individual seed images of two Malaysian rice seed varieties namely MR 219 and MR 269. The acquired seed images were processed using a set of image processing procedure to enhance the image quality. Colour feature extraction was carried out to extract the red (R), green (G), blue (B), hue (H), saturation (S), value (V) and intensity (I) levels of the individual seed images. The classification using ANN was carried out by dividing the data sets into training (70% of data), validation (15%) and testing (15%) dataset respectively. The best ANN model to determine the rice seed varieties was developed, and the accuracy levels of the classification results were 67.5% and 76.7% for testing and training data sets using 40 hidden neurons

Effect of background color on rice seed image segmentation using machine vision

One of the crucial part in the development of machine vision for rice seed identification are the design of the seed holder itself. In this project, seed holder was designed to hold rice seed for image acquisition purposes. Four different colors such as black, blue, green and red was painted on the seed holder. Effect of background colors on rice seeds image segmentation were tested under machine vision setup. Simple rice seed parameters such as seed length and width were measured using image processing technique programmed in LabVIEW software. Percentage error for each background color was calculated based on the actual length and width of the rice seed. Blue background color was found to provide good contrast for estimation of length and width with accuracy less than 2% and 5%, respectively

Soybean quality loss during constant storage conditions

A modified method for determining free fatty acid (FFA) in crude and refined soybean oils from 0.3 to 6.0 g oil sample size was developed. Good correlation between the modified and official methods was established for crude and refined soybean oils with R2 of 0.9995 and 0.997, respectively. The slopes were 1.01 and 0.99 for the crude and refined oil, respectively.;The number of days soybean lost 0.5 and 1.0% dry matter, for low and high harvest moisture content (MC) soybeans both mechanically and manually harvested, were determined. Soybeans manually harvested at 20% MC deteriorated the (26.2 days) while machine harvested at the same MC were more than 50% faster. At optimum harvest MC (13-14%), 0.5% dry matter was lost in 22.5 days.;Preserved soybeans generally have a higher rate of deterioration during storage than fresh one. The rate declined linearly at 0.21 day/week of preservation during storage for the 9% MC soybeans. There was no change in the 22% MC sample.;The effects of preservation on %FFA and damaged kernels total (DKT) during storage was also evaluated. Soybeans preserved at 22% MC at -18°C temperature exhibited a linear increase in the rate of %FFA content during storage with a slope of 0.2. No significant increase in the 9% preserved sample was observed. %DKT during the storage of 22 and 9% preserved samples were not influenced by preservation.;A relationship between %FFA content and DKT with dry matter loss (DML) during storage were also established. FFA and DKT increased at 0.72 and 3.53% per unit DML, respectively. The combination of the DKT and FFA models as a function of DML characterized grades 1 and 2 soybeans to have less than 0.8% FFA and between 1 and 2% for grades 3 and 4.</p

Soybean Mechanical Damage Detection

The sodium hypochlorite and indoxyl acetate tests were compared as methods for quantifying the mechanical damage of soybeans. These methods were selected from six described in the literature. Soybeans at 7 and 21% moisture content were damaged in a Stein Breakage Tester and the remaining whole soybeans were subjected to the two tests. Sodium hypochlorite indicates damage by causing soybeans with cracked hulls to swell whereas the indoxyl acetate test utilizes a dye to stain soybeans with scratched or cracked hulls. The indoxyl acetate test was found to be more sensitive, but the sodium hypochlorite test yielded more consistent data. The hypochlorite test was selected as a suitable test for soybean mechanical damage quantification.This article is from Applied Engineering in Agriculture 16 (2000): 137–141, doi:10.13031/2013.5059. Posted with permission.</p