NIR Technique in the Classification of Cotton Leaf Grade

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 trash.  One term to assess the degree of trash amount is leaf grade, which is determined by qualified USDA’s AMS cotton classers via a visual inspection procedure. Recently, the AMS revised the protocol for cotton leaf grade classification, by replacing the classer’s leaf determination with instrumental leaf measurement from cotton classification HVI^TM system. In this study, visible/NIR spectra were collected to explore the feasibility for the discrimination of cotton samples with various leaf grade categories.