Estimation of the Deoxynivalenol and Moisture Contents of Bulk Wheat Grain Samples by FT‐NIR Spectroscopy

Abstract

Deoxynivalenol (DON) levels in harvested grain samples are used to evaluate the Fusarium head blight (FHB) resistance of wheat cultivars and breeding lines. Fourier transform near‐infrared (FT‐NIR) calibrations were developed to estimate the DON level and moisture content (MC) of bulk wheat grain samples harvested from FHB screening trials. Grains in a rotating glass petri dish were scanned in the 10,000–4,000 cm−1 (1,000–2,500 nm) spectral range using a Perkin Elmer Spectrum 400 FT‐IR/FT‐NIR spectrometer. The DON calibration predicted the DON levels in test samples with R2 = 0.62 and root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) = 8.01 ppm. When 5–25 ppm of DON was used as the cut‐off to classify samples into low‐ and high‐DON groups, 60.8–82.3% of the low‐DON samples were correctly classified, whereas the classification accuracy of the high‐DON group was 82.3–94.0%. The MC calibration predicted the MC in grain samples with R2 = 0.98 and RMSEP = 0.19%. Therefore, these FT‐NIR calibrations can be used to rapidly prescreen wheat lines to identify low‐DON lines for further evaluation using standard laboratory methods, thereby reducing the time and costs of analyzing samples from FHB screening trials.