U. Near Infrared Measurement of Cotton Fiber Micronaire, Maturity and Fineness- a Comparative Investigation

Abstract A key cotton fiber quality property is micronaire, which acts as an indicator of the fiber's maturity and fineness. Previous studies have demonstrated the ability of Near Infrared (NIR) instrumentation to measure these cotton properties with varying degrees of success, but these studies did not provide conclusions on the capabilities of NIR spectroscopy as a general technique for these analyses. Recent advances in NIR technology could result in improved meas-urements of these cotton properties. A compara-tive investigation was implemented to determine the capabilities of modern commercial bench-top and portable NIR systems to monitor cotton fiber micronaire, maturity, and fineness in order to gain insight as to the universality " of the NIR meas-urements for these fiber properties. Cotton sam-ples were analyzed on five commercial systems and an older, custom-built system. Very good spectral agreement was observed between the portable and bench-top NIR units. The rapid and simultaneous measurement of cotton micronaire, maturity, and fineness by multiple commercial systems was demonstrated and compared favora-bly to the custom system, but without the delay and cost in building custom units. For the bench-top NIR systems, all end-state criteria were suc-cessfully meet. The "universal " nature of the NIR measurement of these cotton fiber properties was validated for commercial NIR systems. As expected, the NIR results for the portable NIR units were normally not as good as those for the bench-top instruments, but they were very accept-able for demonstrating the potential for the porta-ble units to measure these cotton fiber properties