NMR stray-field analysis of oil drop size distribtuion in peanut cotyledons

The technique of stray-field NMR has been applied to the study of an oil-bearing seed. It is found to provide additional information about the smallest size of oil drops within the cotyledon not easily measurable by other methods. A peanut was chosen as a convenient seed to investigate so as to allow comparison with previously published NMR pulsed field gradient data. We find a broad distribution of oil drop sizes ranging from a lower limit of order 0.26 microm up to a maximum of approximately 1.3 microm.