Assessment of the Pulpwood Quality of Standing Trees Using near Infrared Spectroscopy

1998 ◽  
Vol 6 (A) ◽  
pp. A117-A123 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. R. Schimleck ◽  
A. J. Michell ◽  
C. A. Raymond ◽  
A. Muneri

In Australia, considerable effort has been directed at improving the pulp yield of plantation grown trees through tree breeding programs. However, an improvement in pulp yield relies on the assessment of large numbers of trees. Traditional methods of assessment are expensive, time consuming and destructive, inhibiting their use. Cores can be extracted non-destructively from standing trees using TRECOR, a handheld motor driven drill. The cores are milled, their near-infrared spectra obtained and pulp yield estimated using an appropriate calibration model. The height at which the core is taken is very important. It must represent the whole tree and sampling must be easy and practical. The longitudinal and radial (within-tree) variation of pulp yield for 15 Eucalyptus nitens trees was examined using near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. The trees were taken from three families (five trees per family) selected for giving high, medium and low pulp yields respectively. Three trees (one from each family) were examined in detail. Maps of within-tree variation of pulp yield were developed. Pulp yield was found to be highly variable within individual trees and between trees of the same family. The yield of samples from 10% of tree height (approximately 2.2 m) gave the best correlation with whole-tree yield. Samples from 5% of tree height (approximately 1.1 m) gave a slightly lower correlation but provided a more convenient sampling height. Ten Eucalyptus globulus and ten E. nitens trees growing on five sites in Australia were used to examine the longitudinal variation of pulp yield. Trees from sites in Tasmania, Western Australia and Victoria were sampled. The optimal sampling height for E. globulus was 1.1 m. No single sampling height could be recommended for E. nitens due to large site effects.

2005 ◽  
Vol 35 (12) ◽  
pp. 2797-2805 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence R Schimleck ◽  
Peter D Kube ◽  
Carolyn A Raymond ◽  
Anthony J Michell ◽  
Jim French

Eucalyptus nitens (Deane and Maiden) Maiden (shining gum) is widely grown for kraft pulp production. Improving the kraft pulp yield of E. nitens increases plantation profitability but traditional assessment is slow and expensive, which hinders improvement. Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy provides a rapid and inexpensive method for estimating pulp yield, but studies have been limited to estimating whole-tree pulp yield using whole-tree composite samples obtained destructively. For whole-tree pulp-yield calibrations to be used non-destructively they must be applied to increment cores. In this study we used a Tasmanian E. nitens whole-tree pulp yield calibration to estimate the whole-tree pulp yields of trees from a site not included in the calibration. This was done using NIR spectra from increment cores and whole-tree composite chips. Predictions of whole-tree pulp yield based on increment cores were better than those obtained using whole-tree composite chips. The accuracy of pulp-yield predictions was greatly improved by adding a small number of prediction-set samples to the calibration sets. Calibrations for estimating whole-tree pulp yield were also obtained using NIR spectra from milled cores and whole-tree composite chips. The calibrations had similar statistics, indicating that it is possible to obtain calibrations for estimating whole-tree pulp yield based on increment-core NIR spectra.


2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (11) ◽  
pp. 2363-2370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence R Schimleck ◽  
Peter D Kube ◽  
Carolyn A Raymond

Eucalyptus nitens (Deane & Maiden) Maiden (shining gum) is widely grown for kraft pulp production in many cool temperate regions of the world. Improving the kraft pulp yield of this species is important for increasing plantation profitability, but traditional assessment is slow and expensive. Cellulose content, which is strongly correlated with pulp yield, has been used as an alternative in tree breeding programs. However, a direct measure of cellulose content still relies on wet chemistry, limiting the number of samples that can be processed and the subsequent gains that can be made in a tree breeding program. An indirect method such as near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy provides a large increase in the numbers of samples that can be analysed. In this study, the genetic gains in cellulose content of E. nitens were compared using cellulose content, determined using wet chemistry and predicted by NIR calibrations based on different sampling intensities. Genetic gains based on NIR-predicted cellulose content were high, and a large proportion of the gain was achievable using a direct measure of cellulose. Calibrations were robust and generally could be reliably used across sites. NIR-predicted cellulose is highly heritable, with heritabilities comparable to or better than direct measures of cellulose.


2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 517-528 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Pulkka ◽  
Vincent Segura ◽  
Anni Harju ◽  
Tarja Tapanila ◽  
Johanna Tanner ◽  
...  

High-throughput and non-destructive methods for quantifying the content of the stilbene compounds of Scots pine ( Pinus sylvestris L.) heartwood are needed in the breeding for decay resistance of heartwood timber. In this study, near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy calibrations were developed for a large collection of solid heartwood increment core samples in order to predict the amount of the stilbene pinosylvin (PS), its monomethyl ether (PSM) and their sum (STB). The resulting models presented quite accurate predictions in an independent validation set with R2V values ranging between 0.79 and 0.91. The accuracy of the models strongly depended on the chemical being calibrated, with the lowest accuracy for PS, intermediate accuracy for PSM and highest accuracy for STB. The effect of collecting one, two or more (up to five) spectra per sample on the calibration models was studied and it was found that averaging multiple spectra yielded better accuracy as it may account for the heterogeneity of wood along the increment core within and between rings. Several statistical pretreatments of the spectra were tested and an automatic selection of wavenumbers prior to calibration. Without the automatic selection of wavenumbers, a first derivative of normalised spectra yielded the best accuracies, whereas after the automatic selection of wavenumbers, no particular statistical pretreatment appeared to yield better results than any other. Finally, the automatic selection of wavenumbers slightly improved the accuracy of the models for all traits. These results demonstrate the potential of NIR spectroscopy as a high-throughput and non-destructive phenotyping technique in tree breeding for the improvement of decay resistance in heartwood timber.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (No. 2) ◽  
pp. 131-136
Author(s):  
Wojciech Poćwiardowski ◽  
Joanna Szulc ◽  
Grażyna Gozdecka

The aim of the study was to elaborate a universal calibration for the near infrared (NIR) spectrophotometer to determine the moisture of various kinds of vegetable seeds. The research was conducted on the seeds of 5 types of vegetables – carrot, parsley, lettuce, radish and beetroot. For the spectra correlation with moisture values, the method of partial least squares regression (PLS) was used. The resulting qualitative indicators of a calibration model (R = 0.9968, Q = 0.8904) confirmed an excellent fit of the obtained calibration to the experimental data. As a result of the study, the possibilities of creating a calibration model for NIR spectrophotometer for non-destructive moisture analysis of various kinds of vegetable seeds was confirmed.<br /><br />


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 308-314
Author(s):  
Emilie Champagne ◽  
Michaël Bonin ◽  
Alejandro A Royo ◽  
Jean-Pierre Tremblay ◽  
Patricia Raymond

Terpenes are phytochemicals found in multiple plant genera, especially aromatic herbs and conifers. Terpene content quantification is costly and complex, requiring the extraction of oil content and gas chromatography analyses. Near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy could provide an alternative quantitative method, especially if calibration can be developed with the spectra of dried plant material, which are easier and faster to acquire than oil-based spectra. Here, multispecies NIR spectroscopy calibrations were developed for total terpene content (mono- and sesquiterpenes) and for specific terpenes (α-pinene, β-pinene and myrcene) with five conifers species ( Picea glauca, Picea rubens, Pinus resinosa, Pinus strobus and Thuja occidentalis). The terpene content of fresh shoot samples was quantified with gas chromatography. The NIR spectra were measured on freeze-dried samples (n = 137). Using a subset of the samples, modified partial least squares regressions of total terpene and the three individual terpenes content were generated as a functions of the NIR spectra. The standard errors of the internal cross-validations (values between 0.25 and 2.28) and the ratio of prediction to deviation ratios (RPD values between 2.20 and 2.38) indicate that all calibrations have similar accuracy. The independent validations, however, suggest that the calibrations for total terpene and α-pinene content are more accurate (respective coefficient of determination: r2 = 0.85 and 0.82). In contrast, calibrations for β-pinene and myrcene had a low accuracy (respectively: r2 = 0.62 and 0.08), potentially because of the low concentration of these terpenes in the species studied. The calibration model fits (i.e., r2) are comparable to previously published calibration using the spectra of dried shoot samples and demonstrate the potential of this method for terpenes in conifer samples. The calibration method used could be useful in several other domains (e.g. seedling breeding program, industrial), because of the wide distribution of terpenes and especially of pinenes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Mohd Yusop Nurida ◽  
Dolmat Norfadilah ◽  
Mohd Rozaiddin Siti Aishah ◽  
Chan Zhe Phak ◽  
Syafiqa M. Saleh

The analytical methods for the determination of the amine solvent properties do not provide input data for real-time process control and optimization and are labor-intensive, time-consuming, and impractical for studies of dynamic changes in a process. In this study, the potential of nondestructive determination of amine concentration, CO2 loading, and water content in CO2 absorption solvent in the gas processing unit was investigated through Fourier transform near-infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy that has the ability to readily carry out multicomponent analysis in association with multivariate analysis methods. The FT-NIR spectra for the solvent were captured and interpreted by using suitable spectra wavenumber regions through multivariate statistical techniques such as partial least square (PLS). The calibration model developed for amine determination had the highest coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.9955 and RMSECV of 0.75%. CO2 calibration model achieved R2 of 0.9902 with RMSECV of 0.25% whereas the water calibration model had R2 of 0.9915 with RMSECV of 1.02%. The statistical evaluation of the validation samples also confirmed that the difference between the actual value and the predicted value from the calibration model was not significantly different and acceptable. Therefore, the amine, CO2, and water models have given a satisfactory result for the concentration determination using the FT-NIR technique. The results of this study indicated that FT-NIR spectroscopy with chemometrics and multivariate technique can be used for the CO2 solvent monitoring to replace the time-consuming and labor-intensive conventional methods.


NIR news ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 16-21
Author(s):  
Xuan Luo ◽  
Akifumi Ikehata ◽  
Kunio Sashida ◽  
Shanji Piao ◽  
Tsutomu Okura ◽  
...  

A major concern for the practical use of NIR spectroscopy is calibration transfer. In this study, different ways of calibration transfer were tried and compared to seek the optimal solution for our developed portable NIR spectrometers, which are designed for rapid diagnosis of bovine anemia due to parasites and are believed to be promising to replace the current time-consuming centrifugation way of measuring Hematocrit value (%) for final diagnosis. Our results show the importance of a robust model during the process of calibration transfer. It is risky to transfer a model which is not robust enough by using standardization algorithm.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Yong-Dong Xu ◽  
Yan-Ping Zhou ◽  
Jing Chen

Sesame oil produced by the traditional aqueous extraction process (TAEP) has been recognized by its pleasant flavor and high nutrition value. This paper developed a rapid and nondestructive method to predict the sesame oil yield by TAEP using near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. A collection of 145 sesame seed samples was measured by NIR spectroscopy and the relationship between the TAEP oil yield and the spectra was modeled by least-squares support vector machine (LS-SVM). Smoothing, taking second derivatives (D2), and standard normal variate (SNV) transformation were performed to remove the unwanted variations in the raw spectra. The results indicated that D2-LS-SVM (4000–9000 cm−1) obtained the most accurate calibration model with root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) of 1.15 (%, w/w). Moreover, the RMSEP was not significantly influenced by different initial values of LS-SVM parameters. The calibration model could be helpful to search for sesame seeds with higher TAEP oil yields.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elise Ai Hwee Kho ◽  
Jill N. Fernandes ◽  
Andrew C. Kotze ◽  
Glen P. Fox ◽  
Maggy T. Sikulu-Lord ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Existing diagnostic methods for the parasitic gastrointestinal nematode, Haemonchus contortus, are time consuming and require specialised expertise, limiting their utility in the field. A practical, on-farm diagnostic tool could facilitate timely treatment decisions, preventing production and welfare loss in the flock. We previously demonstrated the ability of visible-near infrared (vis-NIR) spectroscopy to detect and quantify blood in sheep faeces with high accuracy. Here we investigate whether variation in sheep type and environment affect the prediction accuracy of vis-NIR spectroscopy in quantifying blood in faeces.Methods: Vis-NIR spectra were obtained from worm-free sheep faeces from different environments in South Australia (SA) and New South Wales (NSW), Australia and spiked with various sheep blood concentrations collected. Spectra were analysed using principal component analysis (PCA), and calibration models were built around the haemoglobin (Hb) wavelength region (387 – 609 nm) using partial least squares (PLS) regression. Models were used to predict Hb concentrations in spiked faeces from SA and naturally infected Queensland (QLD) faeces. Naturally occurring blood in QLD samples was quantified using Hemastix® and FAMACHA© scores.Results: PCA showed that location, class of sheep and pooled/individual samples were factors affecting the Hb predictions in sheep faeces. The calibration models successfully differentiated ‘healthy’ SA samples from those requiring anthelmintic treatment with moderate to good prediction accuracy (sensitivity: 57 – 94%, specificity: 44 – 79%). The models were not predictive for naturally infected QLD samples, which may be due in part to variability of faecal background and blood chemistry between samples, or the difference in validation methods used for blood quantification. PCA of QLD samples, however, identified a difference between samples containing high and low quantities of blood.Conclusion: This study demonstrates the potential of vis-NIR spectroscopy for estimating blood concentration in faeces from various types of sheep and environmental backgrounds. However, the calibration models developed here did not capture enough environmental variation to accurately predict Hb in faeces collected from environments different to those used in the calibration model. Consequently, it will be necessary to establish models that incorporate samples that are more representative of areas where H. contortus is endemic for the accurate prediction of H. contortus infections in these regions.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elise Ai Hwee Kho ◽  
Jill N. Fernandes ◽  
Andrew C. Kotze ◽  
Glen P. Fox ◽  
Maggy T. Sikulu-Lord ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Existing diagnostic methods for the parasitic gastrointestinal nematode, Haemonchus contortus, are time consuming and require specialised expertise, limiting their utility in the field. A practical, on-farm diagnostic tool could facilitate timely treatment decisions, preventing production and welfare loss in the flock. We previously demonstrated the ability of visible-near infrared (vis-NIR) spectroscopy to detect and quantify blood in sheep faeces with high accuracy. Here we investigate whether variation in sheep type and environment affect the prediction accuracy of vis-NIR spectroscopy in quantifying blood in faeces. Methods: Vis-NIR spectra were obtained from worm-free sheep faeces collected from different environments and sheep types in South Australia (SA) and New South Wales (NSW), Australia and spiked with various sheep blood concentrations. Spectra were analysed using principal component analysis (PCA), and calibration models were built around the haemoglobin (Hb) wavelength region (387 – 609 nm) using partial least squares (PLS) regression. Models were used to predict Hb concentrations in spiked faeces from SA and naturally infected sheep faeces from Queensland (QLD). QLD samples were quantified using Hemastix® and FAMACHA © scores. Results: PCA showed that location, class of sheep and pooled/individual samples were factors affecting the Hb predictions. The models successfully differentiated ‘healthy’ SA samples from those requiring anthelmintic treatment with moderate to good prediction accuracy (sensitivity: 57 – 94%, specificity: 44 – 79%). The models were not predictive for blood in naturally infected QLD samples, which may be due in part to variability of faecal background and blood chemistry between samples, or the difference in validation methods used for blood quantification. PCA of QLD samples, however, identified a difference between samples containing high and low quantities of blood. Conclusion: This study demonstrates the potential of vis-NIR spectroscopy for estimating blood concentration in faeces from various types of sheep and environmental backgrounds. However, the calibration models developed here did not capture enough environmental variation to accurately predict Hb in faeces collected from environments different to those used in the calibration model. Consequently, it will be necessary to establish models that incorporate samples that are more representative of areas where H. contortus is endemic.


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