For the first time in India, X-ray radiography has been established as an efficient method to quantify commercially important traits in unshelled peanuts
A study led by a team of researchers from the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and Germany-based Fraunhofer Development Center for X-ray Technology has demonstrated the potential of X-ray radiography for a rapid and non-destructive determination of key market-related traits from X-ray scans of peanuts while still inside the hull.
What took three-five skilled workers 30 minutes can now be done by a single technician in two minutes. This enables the accurate and timely evaluation of the peanut pods for important market-related characteristics like kernel weight or shelling percentage from the X-ray scan of whole unshelled peanut pods.
The computer tomography (CT)-system enabling such analysis is available at ICRISAT headquarters in Hyderabad.
The processing algorithms that allow ‘virtual shelling’ are also being explored for feature evaluation of rice, oats and barley, and pigeon pea for estimation of other commercially significant traits like milling recovery.
This study has shown that X-ray radiography has the potential to be the right technology for in-field evaluation of farmers’ produce which the International Committee for Food Value and Safety calls for.
Image credit- ICRISAT