Exploring NIR Technique in Rapid Prediction of Cotton Trash Components

Near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy, a useful technique due to the speed, ease of use, and adaptability to on-line or off-line implementation, has been applied to perform the qualitative classification and quantitative prediction on a number of cotton quality indices, including cotton trashes from HVI, SA, and AFIS measurement.  It is well-known that these trash measuring devices only yield the total amount of trashes, instead of the content for individual trash component. This difficulty originates from the complexity of co-existence of various trash types, for example, leaves (leaf and bract), seed coats, hulls, and stems. To this point, mixtures of known trash components (e.g., leaves, seed coats, hulls, stems, and sand/soil) with cut lint fibers were prepared and then their NIR spectra were correlated with the respective contents.