Evaluation of Near Infrared Spectroscopy for the Direct Analysis of Cane Quality Characters

Abstract

The use of near infrared spectroscopy, JEFFCO Infracana II, in the breeding and selection programme of the Mauritius Sugarcane Industry Research Institute (MSIRI) has led to a more reliable and rapid approach in estimating essential laboratory cane quality characters. The assessment of sucrose and fibre content now takes less than one minute per sample of cane with increased analytical precision and requiring considerably less labour. The latest calibration model in 2017 is based on approximately 3000 samples for Brix % cane, Pol % cane and fibre % cane. With this calibration model, the number of outliers generated that necessitate a separate laboratory analysis has been reduced to 5% or below. In fact, with the latest calibration model developed in 2018, the number of outliers has been considerable reduced and is now below 2%. The inclusion of more cane samples from high biomass and high sucrose sugar cane varieties will improve the robustness of the calibration models and further limit the number of outliers. Results from wet laboratory analyses were linearly regressed against those obtained from NIR giving a Pearson R2 values of 0.89 for Pol % cane, 0.90 for Brix % cane and 0.74 for fibre % cane.