The quantitative detection of botanical trashes contained in seed cotton with near infrared spectroscopy method

This study is performed to investigate the potential of near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy for the detection of botanical trashes content of seed cotton harvested by cotton-picker (SCHCP). Large quantity of trashes become comingled with cotton fiber in the harvesting process, especially when the cotton is harvested with cotton-picker. In China, trashes content of seed cotton (SC) has to be detected when farmers sell the SC to ginneries because trashes reduce the prices of SC and it should be deducted from the whole weight. The conventional instrumental method used to detect the trashes content of SC, ginning and trashes analysis, is complex and time consuming. In this study, 353 SC samples were collected from three ginneries, the NIR spectra bands from 12,000 to 4000 cm ⁻¹ were collected with the FT-NIR spectrometer Nexus. Models between NIR spectra and the trashes contents of these SC samples have been developed with the method of partial least square regression (PLSR), bands of 12,000–4000 cm ⁻¹ , multiplicative signal correction (MSC) was used to eliminate the negative effects caused by sample shapes, second derivative spectra were used to eliminate the translation and the rotation in the spectral baseline. And the parameters of optimized model: R ² is up to 0.985 (calibration set) and 0.973 (prediction set), RMSEC is as low as 0.072 g and RMSEP is 0.158 g. Results of ANOVA also certified the trashes contents calculated with the models are consistent with the actual trashes contents.