A Novel Technology in Malaysian Agriculture

This paper is to introduce the novel method of procedure and analysis in study the relationship of the mesocarp oil content with the colour skin of oil palm fruit with respect to it maturity. The Nikon digital camera and the Keyence machine vision were used to capture the FFB images with two different settings of natural environment and direct sunlight. The species of oil palm tree used for the experiments were Elaeis Oleifera and Elaeis Guineensis Jacq. The images from the Nikon digital camera were analysed for optical properties of Red, Green, Blue (RGB) and then convert to Hue value using developed graphical user interface (GUI). The Hue values will then be compared to the value obtained from Keyence machine vision. The images of oil palm FFB in plantation were captured with setting cameras parameter namely shutterspeed which set to 0.125 seconds, image sensor’s sensitivity (ISO) was set to Normal and white balance were calibrated using the standard white calibration CR-A74. The lighting intensity under oil palm canopy was simultaneously recorded and monitored using Extech Light Meter Datalogger. Using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), the ratio of test statistic of F with F critical for experiments under natural environment of oil palm plantation indicated the best differences of the hue optical properties among different maturity level of unripe, ripe and overripe FFB. Using the SAS programming for statistical analysis, the Hue and Red color values were found had significant effect to distinguish the maturity level (fm) of FFB with Pr > F are showed less than 0.01. The Green and Blue color values were not significant effect to differentiate the FFB maturity level which indicated the value of Pr > F showed 0.0243 and 0.9938 respectively. The Hue and Blue color values were not interaction with different lighting condition and the maturity level which indicated Pr > F for ml*fm showed 0.0668 and 0.1667 respectively. From the ANOVA analysis, the Hue is the best color values to distinguish different maturity levels of FFB under direct sun lighting and natural environment conditions in oil palm plantation. From this experiment analysis, the technique is used for the application of the novel oil palm fruit bunch maturity detection system.