Production of Gluten-free Oat Products using a Novel Near Infrared Sorting Technique

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Currently, quality inspection of oats is primarily based on human visual inspection where trained personnel manually inspect samples of approximately 50,000 kernels. It is not time-efficient because the inspector must identify all types of contaminants, then separate them into classes (e.g. barley, wheat, and rye), and finally compile a quality inspection report. Several research studies have shown that machine-vision can be an alternative way to human inspection in separating grain of different types. However, the machine vision technique is not effective in separating oat and barley kernels due to their near-identical size. With increasing advances in spectroscopy technology, the near infrared reflectance (NIR) and near infrared transmittance (NIT) techniques are becoming increasingly popular for quality evaluation of many cereal grains. The advantage of near infrared techniques is that spectral information can be used to discriminate different types of grains. The overall objective of this study is to investigate the feasibility of using NIR and NIT techniques for separation of gluten-free oats from other gluten-rich grains. The outcomes of this project will help our industrial partner, Richardson International Ltd., to come up with strategies to enhance their current oat sorting process using a NIR/NIT-based high-speed grain sorter.