Separation of Cultivars of Soybeans by Chemometric Methods Using Near Infrared Spectroscopy

Near Infrared (NIR) Spectroscopy technique combined with chemometrics methods were used to group and identify samples of different soy cultivars. Spectral data, collected in the range of 714 to 2500 nm (14000 to 4000 cm-1), were obtained from whole grains of four different soybean cultivars and were submitted to different types of pre-treatments. Chemometrics algorithms were applied to extract relevant information from the spectral data, to remove the anomalous samples and to group the samples. The best results were obtained considering the spectral range from 1900.6 to 2187.7 nm (5261.4 cm-1 to 4570.9 cm-1) and with spectral treatment using Multiplicative Signal Correction (MSC) + Baseline Correct (linear fit), what made it possible to the exploratory techniques Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) to separate the cultivars. Thus, the results demonstrate that NIR spectroscopy allied with de chemometrics techniques can provide a rapid, nondestructive and reliable method to distinguish different cultivars of soybeans.