Laboratory and Outside the Laboratory Measurements of Ginned and Not Ginned Cotton for Fiber Micronaire and Maturity by Portable Near Infrared (NIR) Instruments

摘要

Micronaire is a key cotton quality assessment property, impacting downstream fiber processing and dye consistency. A component of micronaire is fiber maturity (degree of secondary wall development). Historically, micronaire and maturity are measured in a laboratory under tight environmental conditions. Interest was expressed in measurements that can be performed both in the laboratory and outside the laboratory (field, greenhouse, etc.). With portable Near Infrared (NIR) instruments, micronaire and maturity measurements were made on seed cotton (measured directly on the cotton boll) and ginned cotton lint. NIR results yielded acceptable, but biased, method agreement to reference maturity values for over 200 samples from 3 varieties, but distinct deviations due to variety effects were observed for micronaire. Chemometric models were developed that improved NIR predictability for micronaire and maturity and which minimized the impact of variety on the results.