Measurement of medullation in wool and mohair using an Optical Fibre Diameter Analyser

We conducted three experiments to evaluate the Optical Fibre Diameter Analyser (OFDA) for estimating medullation (med [M], kemp [K], and total [T] medullated fiber content) in mohair and wool produced by Angora goats and sheep, respectively. Medullation can be a beneficial characteristic in certain types of wool, but it is highly undesirable in mohair and apparel wools. Current techniques for evaluating medullation in animal fibers are laborious, slow, and expensive. The OFDA had been modified by the manufacturer to measure fiber opacity distribution, a characteristic known to be indicative of medullation in white fibers, and was capable of providing such measurements in a very short time. Measurements made on magnified fiber images produced with a projection microscope (PM) were used as a reference for M, K, and T in fiber samples. An initial experiment with 124 mohair samples (T = .10 to 9.10%) seemed to indicate that OFDA estimates of M, K, and T were only poorly correlated with corresponding PM values (r2 = .5409, .1401, and .5576, respectively). However, a second experiment using wool and mohair samples containing a wider range of medullation (T = .58 to 26.54%) revealed that OFDA estimates of M, K, and T for wool were highly correlated with PM measurements (r2 = .9853, .9307, and .9728, respectively). Evidence was also obtained indicating that the low r2 values associated with mohair relationships were likely due to a combination of factors: 1) high variation among the standard PM measurements and 2) the relatively low M, K, and T contents of the mohair samples compared with wool. In a third experiment, greater accuracy was obtained in the PM measurements by evaluating many more individual fibers per sample (10,000). In this case, OFDA estimates of M, K, and T for mohair were highly correlated with corresponding PM measurements (r2 = .8601, .9939, and .9696, respectively). However, the two sets of linear regression equations obtained for wool and mohair were somewhat different, indicating that separate calculations should be used to estimate PM measurements from OFDA data. In conclusion, it was demonstrated that the OFDA instrument is capable of providing relatively fast, accurate, and potentially less expensive estimates of medullated fiber characteristics in mohair and wool.