Applications

The SKCS brings great benefits in flour milling, malting, grain trade and seed breeding.

Seed breeding

Focus is increasingly being placed on grain uniformity, not average properties. The SKCS 4100 is the only instrument designed to help breeders determine uniformity, from early generations and onwards.

Grain collection and trade

Major grain producing countries use the SKCS 4100 for crop surveys and publish the results in their official reports as a way to market their products internationally. SKCS 4100 is also the official method for wheat hardness in several countries.

Flour milling

The SKCS 4100 will help the miller to optimize extraction by determining important characteristics such as kernel size and uniformity. It also makes it possible to detect mixtures of hard and soft wheat that would not perform optimally in the mill.

He wants to produce as much flour as possible of the correct quality, from a certain amount of grain. Within a specific load of wheat the miller wants the grain to be as uniform as possible to obtain the optimal milling result. The individual kernels should be as uniform as possible in terms of weight, diameter, hardness, moisture et c.

If the grain is not uniform, the milling result will decrease. For example a load of mixed wheat can be analyzed by NIR and be found to have a good hardness, but in reality the grain can be a mix of hard and soft wheat that will produce flour of incorrect quality. Other examples are the importance of the distribution in kernel size in milling process and the moisture distribution in the tempering process.

There is an increasing awareness in the grain industry, of the importance of grain uniformity for a proper milling result, and the costs in reduced quality and quantity of flour if processing non- uniform grain. The miller, who produces the flour, is also depending on grain traders, grain intakes and ultimately the breeders to supply him with the proper raw material. The uniformity in grain cannot be measured as an average for a sample, but must be analyzed on a single kernel basis.

Malting

Uniformity in kernel size and hardness will improve the malting process. The SKCS 4100 will show whether a batch of barley will germinate in a uniform manner, giving a malt with higher extracts without sacrificing yield.

Technology

The SKCS 4100 singulates individual kernels, weighs them, then crushes them between a toothed rotor and a progressively narrowing crescent gap. As a kernel is crushed, the force between the rotor and crescent and the conductivity between the rotor and the electrically isolated crescent are measured. This information is processed to provide weight, size, moisture and hardness information on an individual kernel basis.

Mean hardness index, weight, size, moisture and their standard deviations are then calculated from the single kernel data obtained on a 300 kernel sample. Hardness classification is determined from the average hardness index of the sample and the distribution of individual kernel hardness measurements within four hardness ranges as defined by the USDA/GIPSA. Results are obtained as mean values and standard deviations for each of the four parameters. Distributions of kernel data are illustrated in histograms. Further the SKCS 4100 classifies the wheat according to the Hardness Inde