Development of an automatic rice-quality inspection system

摘要

The need has arisen in rice-drying facilities in Japan for an accurate method to measure quality aspects of rice when it arrives at the drying facility. The precision and accuracy of a near-infrared (NIR) spectrometer and a visible light (VIS) segregator were found to be sufficiently high to determine moisture content, protein content and sound whole kernel rate. An automatic rice-quality inspection system was consequently developed. The system consists of a rice huller, a rice cleaner, an NIR spectrometer and a VIS segregator. Based on rice-quality information, this system enables rough rice transported to a rice-drying facility to be classified into six qualitative grades.