Abstract
ABSTRACT A flatoxin has been confirmed to be an important car-cinogen in certain animals and its contamination has been discovered in such agricultural products as corn, barley, rice, soybeans, wheat, cowpeas, sweet potatoes, cotton seed, and various types of nuts from all over the world (Anon., 1974; Anon., 1976). Detoxification by some method is essential if the hazards of consumption are to be removed. Automatic removal of the con-taminated portion of a product would be an effective means of reducing the hazards. There are several studies on record of the correlation between fluorescence and aflatoxin contaminated nuts and seeds (Ashworth and McMeans, 1966), white corn (Fennel et al., 1973), and pecans (Tyson and Clark, 1974). Bothast et al. (1975) showed the relationship of bright-greenish-yellow (BGY) fluorescence emission of wheat, oats, barley, sorghum and corn to aflatoxin con-tamination. Dickens and Welty (1975) observed that an average of 7 percent of the shells of the nuts in samples from 46 naturally contaminated lots of pistachio nuts emitted a BGY fluorescence, and this portion of the nuts contained an average of 50 percent of the aflatoxin in the lots. Farsaie et al., (1978) while studying the fluorescence of pistachio nuts under long wavelength ultra-violet light (LW-UV) observed that the nuts could be classified into four basic categories: bright-greening yellow (BGY), bright yellow (BY), normal (N), and purple (P), fluores-cence. Several sorting indices were developed and tested (Farsaie etal., 1978). McClure and Farsaie (1977) developed a fiber optic photometer for making fluorescence measurements at two wavelengths simultaneously. Work with this photo-meter indicated that the log ratio log10 (I490/I420) was the best optical index for dividing pistachio nuts into the four fluorescence categories (BGY, BY, N, and P). This paper describes the design and performance of an automatic sorting machine which employs this index.
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