Evaluation of Near Infrared Reflectance for Oil Content of Cottonseed

Cotton improvement is based on the production and sale of fiber, but cottonseed products are an important secondary product. Cottonseed is a major oilseed in domestic and international markets. Currently, no ready methods exist that can be used in cotton breeding and testing programs to routinely evaluate oil content of cottonseed. We are reporting the development and evaluation of methods calibrating near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) instrumentation for the measurement of oil content in cottonseed. Six cotton lines were grown at two locations for three years to generate prediction equations for oil content of cottonseed. The equations were generated with NIRS based on seed-oil contents from continuous wave nuclea