Determination of maize hardness by biospeckle and fuzzy granularity

A. L. DAI PRA; L. I. PASSONI; C. WEBER; H. J. RABAL; M. TRIVI

Porto

Congreso; 8th Iberoamerican Optics Meeting and 11th Latin American Meeting on Optics, Lasers, and Applications; 2013

Sociedad Portuguesa de Optica

Corn seeds present different uses depending on the physicochemical composition that defines grain types, which is related with market prices. The endosperm chemical composition is what sets different grain shapes and physical characteristics. The relative amount of floury (soft or dent) versus the vitreous endosperm (hard or flinty) determines its importance for the industry use and also their price. In this work we compare the current flotation method with the measurement of areas corresponding to each endosperm phase (floury and vitreous) in biospeckle images of wet seeds, processed with temporal fuzzy granularity. The proposed method is adequate given than the evaporation of water in porous materials depends on the surface sample properties. This type of measurement is simple, does not require expensive equipment and can be implemented in almost real time. Floury phase shows higher activity than vitreous one. Results showed that the method is useful to characterize the corn grains composition with an evaluation of the ratio of its constituents, which may be useful for typing of different grain items, allowing the definition of different destinations in the industrialization process.