Investigation of the NMR techniques to detect hidden defects in hazelnuts

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) has been widely used in chemical analysis and medical diagnosis. In recent years, thanks to the development of the NMR instrumentation and the software for data analysis, it is becoming a useful tool for quality control in food industry. In this field several applications have been developed related to the compositional and structural analysis, authentication, packaging, on-line monitoring. The present work highlights the capability of NMR to discern between the oil extracted from healthy and unhealthy hazelnuts, as a preliminary step towards the automatic detection of the hidden defects in full hazelnuts. Different techniques are analyzed (i.e. Single pulse and CPMG) with especial focus on the digital processing of the NMR data in order to setup the final measurement system