Rapid and nondestructive determination of seed oil by pulsed nuclear magnetic resonance technique

Abstract

Abstract The pulsed NMR technique for rapid and nondestructive determination of oil in oilseeds has been developed. The effects of spin‐lattice relaxation time, spin‐spin relaxation time, seed moisture, angular position of the seeds, sample tube thickness, and sample height upon the magnitude and reproducibility of the NMR signal were studied. Based upon these studies, various parameters for seed oil analysis have been fixed. The oil content of Brassica, peanut, and sunflower seeds was determined. The reproducibility of the measurement is ± 1 %. The technique was tested by measuring the oil content of the same seeds by the cold percolation method (CCl 4 extraction). It was further tested by determining the oil content of 60 Brassica seed samples independently at three laboratories. The results of these tests are given.