RADIOFREQUENCY DENSITY-INDEPENDENT MOISTURE DETERMINATION IN WHEAT

A technique to rapidly determine the moisture content of hard red winter wheat, Triticum aestivum L., independent of density, is presented. The complex impedance of bulk samples at 1 and 10 MHz was used along with a density-independent function to predict moistures ranging from approximately 11 to 22% in samples with bulk densities ranging from 0.65 to 0.85 g/cm3. Calibration was performed on wheat of two cultivars harvested in 1991, and verification was tested on a different cultivar harvested in 1990. Measurements of the system were compared to air-oven moisture determinations with a standard deviation of the differences of 0.5% moisture content.