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Edith Christensen Award for Outstanding Contributions in Analytical Methodology - (The long journey of spectroscopic methods in cereals analysis, from moisture to the intangible)
S. R. DELWICHE (1). (1) USDA ARS, Beltsville, MD, U.S.A.

Cereals quality measurement, be it by quantization or categorization, dates back to the founding days of AACC. A major breakthrough in measurement methodology for wheat flour occurred in the post World War II era of the 1950s when the technology of photodetectors became available for civilian use. At that time, engineers and scientists of the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service in Beltsville, Maryland pioneered the use of that forgotten region of the electromagnetic spectrum sandwiched between visible light and the infrared “fingerprint” region, known as the near-infrared, or NIR, region. This humble beginning involved the measurement of moisture in wheat flour. From this early work, combined with the later introduction of civilian computers to control these meters, an entire industry of near-IR analysis was spawned that today has reaches into the food, pharmaceutical, environmental, and chemical fields. The cereals quality work performed at Beltsville (later coming under the auspices of USDA-ARS) has continued over the decades up through today, taking advantage of advances in spectroscopy (visible, near-, mid and Raman), statistics, and concurrent advances in primary biochemical procedures, all of which has led to NIR spectroscopy being the mainstay for rapid measurement. As a scientist assigned for more than 20 years to the Beltsville lab that revolutionized NIR technology, I continue this lineage, with attention paid to rapid optical methods that examine macronutrients (protein, starch, moisture), functionality (dough handling, gluten quality), safety (scab, black tip), defects, and classification. The talk will focus on the basic research that explains the triumphs and limitations of vibration spectroscopies applied to grain, as well as on the applied research that has evolved into the release of approved methods of AACC International which are used worldwide.

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