Binary mixtures of waxy wheat and conventional wheat as measured by NIR reflectance

Waxy wheat contains very low concentration (generally <2%) of amylose in endosperm starch, in contrast to conventional wheat whose starch is typically 20% amylose, with the balance being the branched macromolecule, amylopectin. With the release of a commercial hard winter waxy wheat cultivar in the United States, the grain trade, milling, and processing industries seek to have a rapid technique to ensure the purity of identity preserved waxy wheat lots. Near infrared (NIR) reflectance spectroscopy, a technique widely used in the cereals industry for proximate analysis, is a logical candidate for measuring contamination level and thus is the subject of this study. Two sets of wheat samples, harvested, prepared and scanned one year apart, were used to evaluate the NIR concept. One year consisted of nine pairs of conventional:waxy preparations, with each preparation consisting of 29 binary mixtures ranging in conventional wheat fraction (by weight) of 0-100% (261 spectral samples). The second year was prepared in the same fashion, with 12 preparations, thus producing 348 spectral samples. One year's samples were controlled for protein content and moisture level between pair components in order to avoid the basis for the conventional wheat fraction models being caused by something other than spectral differences attributed to waxy and nonwaxy endosperm. Likewise the second year was controlled by selection of conventional wheat for mixture preparation based on either protein content or cluster analysis of principal components of candidate spectra. Partial least squares regression, one and two-term linear regression, and support vector machine regression models were examined. Validation statistics arising from sets within the same year or across years were remarkably similar, as were those among the three regression types. A single wavelength on second derivative transformed spectra, namely 2290 nm, was effective at estimating the mixture level by weight, with standard errors of performance in the 6-9% range. Thus, NIR spectroscopy may be used for measuring conventional hard wheat 'contamination' in waxy wheat at mixture levels above 10% w/w.