ASABE Technical Library - Abstract

Abstract. For peanut yield monitoring it has been demonstrated that determination of peanut moisture content may be useful in reducing yield prediction error. There are no commercially available technologies that provide accurate means of measuring moisture content of whole pod peanuts. In this study, two hand held grain moisture meters were evaluated for use in determination of shelled and whole pod peanut moisture content. The meter readings were compared to oven-dried moisture contents using ASAE S410.2. Whole pod moisture contents were measured on 38 samples of virginia and 10 samples of runner type peanuts using a Dickey John M3G handheld moisture meter. A regression model was developed to adjust the meter readings as a function of the oven dried moisture contents. The results from the whole pod moisture tests demonstrated an average absolute prediction error of 1.9 %MC, or 10.3% average absolute error. Shelled moisture contents were measured on 31 samples of virginia type peanuts using a Dickey John mini GAC plus grain moisture tester and a regression model was developed as described above. The results from the shelled moisture tests demonstrated an average absolute prediction error of 1.3 %MC, or 7.5% average absolute error. The kernel moisture samples were subsamples of larger samples for which oven dried moisture whole pod content was also determined. This allowed comparison of whole pod to kernel moisture content for the 31 samples. The results of the whole pod tests are suggestive that dielectric methods already used for determining grain moisture content may be viable for on-the-go non-destructive moisture determination on peanut combines, but that the accuracy will be less than that experienced when using the same devices for measuring grain moisture.