EVALUATION OF A HIGHâSPEED COLOR SORTER FOR SEGREGATION OF RED AND WHITE WHEAT

Abstract

A highspeed color sorter has the potential to help wheat breeders purify their white wheat breeding lines andwhite wheat exporters meet purity requirements of end users. For this reason, a commercial color sorter was evaluated forsorting mixed red and white wheat. Ten wheat blends containing 95% white and 5% red wheat by mass were produced bymixing common cultivars of hard white and hard red winter wheat. The sorter was set to accept white wheat and reject redwheat in single pass when viewed by either a green or red filter. Percentages of red and white wheat in the accept and rejectportions were determined by soaking in sodium hydroxide, a definitive method for determining if a wheat kernel is red or white.In order to reject most of the red wheat in a single pass through the sorter, at least 15% of the original wheat mass neededto be rejected. For wheat blends with white wheat of consistent color that contrasted considerably with the red wheatcontaminant, this rejection would reduce red wheat mass in the accept portion to <1%. This reduction could be achieved formost other blends when rejecting 20 to 25% of the mass or through resorting the accept portion. The red filter resulted inmore red kernels rejected than the green filter.