An Instrument to Measure the Characteristics of Single Wheat Grain Kernels

This paper describes an instrument, based on microwave techniques and a gas displacement method, to measure the wet mass, moisture content, volume and hence the density of single wheat grain kernels. A low-cost microwave source and detector is designed to drive a microwave cavity to determine the wet mass and moisture content of the grain. The microwave cavity is compactly integrated with the volume meter to combine the measurements into a single assembly with one loading cycle. The loading mechanism is separated from two novel gas compression bellows to improve the accuracy and stability of this measurement. All of the results are processed using a microcontroller. The measured wet mass, moisture content, volume and density of the grain are shown on an LCD display