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Abstract
The presence of foreign matter in ginned cotton lowers the quality and ultimately the monetary value of cotton. Previous studies have shown benefits of using ultraviolet excited fluorescence to detect certain cotton contamination that is difficult to detect using other methods. The overall goal of this study was to explore the feasibility of using hyperspectral fluorescence imaging as a complementary tool for foreign matter differentiation. The mean spectra of lint and seven types of foreign matter were extracted from the hyperspectral fluorescence images using a region-of-interest-based approach. The principal component analysis was applied to select the optimal features from a total of 113 wavelengths covering the spectral range of 425-700 nm. The linear discriminant analysis with the selected wavelengths achieved an average classification rate of 90% for all samples. Therefore, this imaging method could be used as a complementary sensing modality to current instruments that are employed for cotton quality assessment in the textile industry.
Keywords
cotton, foreign matter, lint, fluorescence, ultraviolet, hyperspectral imaging
Cotton is an economically important crop grown primarily for the production of apparel and furnishings. During harvesting, cotton lint could be contaminated by various types of foreign matter. Foreign matter in this paper refers to non-lint materials in cotton and originates either from botanical or non-botanical sources. Botanical foreign matter typically comes from different parts of the cotton plant or other vegetation, while nonbotanical foreign matter is brought to cotton fields from elsewhere. To ascertain the market value of the harvested cotton, a series of quality assessment steps are undertaken once the cotton passes through the ginning process. During ginning, most foreign matter is removed, but some remnants remain mixed with the lint fibers.
The presence of non-lint matter in ginned cotton is one of the criteria considered when ascertaining cotton quality. In the USA, samples of ginned cotton are sent to the cotton classing offices for evaluation by human classers and instrument testing. Qualified US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) human classers visually examine the cotton samples and compare them to the Universal Cotton Standards for manual determination of leaf grade and extraneous matter. An instrument with the capability to quantify the amount of foreign matter in ginned cotton is the Standardized Instrument Testing of...