Cotton Trash Characterization with Fluorescence Spectroscopy

Seed cotton contains a number of trash components originating from botanical and non-botanical sources picked up from the field during harvesting. An imaging method with potential to aid in cotton trash classification is fluorescent imaging. The first step in development of a fluorescent imaging system is to characterize individual types of cotton trash with fluorescence spectroscopy in order to determine their optimum excitation/emission wavelength bands so appropriate excitation sources can be chosen. A group consisting of five types of botanical trash (bark, bract, brown leaf, green leaf, seed coat) and three types of non-botanical trash (paper, bale packaging, twine) was chosen, in addition to lint. Each cotton trash type and lint were subjected to a fluorescence spectroscopy analysis to determine their optimal excitation and emission wavelength peaks. Future studies will focus on developing the imaging system, analyzing cotton trash types with the imaging system for unique identifiers from a number of color models, and their potential for classification.