Prediction of moisture content uniformity using hyperspectral imaging technology during the drying of maize kernel**

*Corresponding author e-mail: [email protected] **This work was financial supported from China 863 HI-TECH R and D Program (No. 2011AA100802), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61271384 and 1275155), the 111 Project (B12018) and PAPD of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions and sponsored by Qing Lan Project, 2014-2016. A b s t r a c t. Moisture content uniformity is one of critical parameters to evaluate the quality of dried products and the drying technique. The potential of the hyperspectral imaging technique for evaluating the moisture content uniformity of maize kernels during the drying process was investigated. Predicting models were established using the partial least squares regression method. Two methods, using the prediction value of moisture content to calculate the uniformity (indirect) and predicting the moisture content uniformity directly, were investigated. Better prediction results were achieved using the direct method (with correlation coefficients RP = 0.848 and root-mean-square error of prediction RMSEP = 2.73) than the indirect method (RP = 0.521 and RMSEP = 10.96). The hyperspectral imaging technique showed significant potential in evaluating moisture content uniformity of maize kernels during the drying process. K e y w o r d s: maize kernels, hyperspectral imaging, moisture content uniformity, drying