Abstract:There is a certain demand to carry out the on-site rapid and non-destructive detection and sorting of typical woody grain, i.e. chestnuts. Based on visible/near-infrared spectroscopy and analysis technology, a rotary chestnut online detection and sorting system was developed. This system mainly consisted of a feeding unit, a spectral acquisition unit, a control unit, a sorting unit, and a display unit. The experiment of vibration disk in the feeding unit determined that 150Hz was the optimal frequency, and a servo motor was connected to drive the disk. The halogen lamps were used as light sources and a micro-spectrometer was used to collect spectral information in the spectral acquisition unit. After comparison, a parallel control plan was determined in the control unit. Based on the QT platform and C++ language, a microcontroller program was developed. The program combined with the developed spectral acquisition software for the upper computer was used to achieve the collection, processing, display, storage, and discrimination of spectral information. The electromagnetic push rod was applied to drive the expansion and contraction of the baffle to complete the opening and closing of the hole. Chestnuts from Qianxi, Dandong, and Yuxi were selected as experimental samples, spectra were collected and spectral preprocessing methods were applied to establish partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) models for comparison. The PLS-DA models for geographical origins and mildew discrimination were developed, respectively. The correct classification accuracy of the model for geographical origins in prediction set was 97.12%, and it was 94.74% of the model for mildew discrimination. The optimal detection and sorting efficiency was to process 37 samples per minute by this device. Finally, the models were individually implanted into the system software, and random prediction sets of chestnuts were used for tests. The correct classification accuracies of the models for geographical origins and mildew discrimination achieved 93.83% and 94.12%, respectively. The results indicated that the designed rotary detection and sorting system and device presented high efficiency, stable collection, and high detection accuracy. It was feasible to quickly achieve the goal of non-destructive detection and sorting of chestnuts from different geographical origins and mildew or not.