Detection of underdeveloped hazelnuts from fully developed nuts by impact acoustics

Onaran I., Pearson T. C., Yardimci Y., Cetin A. E.

TRANSACTIONS OF THE ASABE, vol.49, no.6, pp.1971-1976, 2006 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 49 Issue: 6
  • Publication Date: 2006
  • Journal Name: TRANSACTIONS OF THE ASABE
  • Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus
  • Page Numbers: pp.1971-1976
  • Middle East Technical University Affiliated: No

Abstract

Shell-to-kernel weight ratio is a Vital measurement of quality in hazelnuts as it helps to identify nuts that have underdeveloped kernels. Nuts containing underdeveloped kernels may contain mycotoxin-producing molds, which are linked to cancer and are heavily regulated in interviational trade. A prototype system was set up to detect underdeveloped hazelnuts by dropping them onto a steel plate and recording the acoustic signal that was generated when a kernel hit the plate. A feature vector comprising line spectral frequencies and time-domain maxima that describes both the time and frequency nature of the impact sound was extracted from each sound signal and used to classify each nut by a support-vector machine. Experimental studies demonstrated accuracies as high as 97% in classifying hazelnuts with underdeveloped kernels.