Classical chromatographic methods, such as ultra performance liquid chromatography (UPLC), are used as reference methods to assess seed quality and homogeneous pesticide coating of seeds. These methods have some important drawbacks since they are time consuming, expensive, destructive and require a substantial amount of solvent, among others. Near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy seems to be an interesting alternative technique for the determination of the quality of seed treatment and avoids most of these drawbacks. The objective of this study was to assess the quality of pesticide coating treatment by near infrared hyperspectral imaging (NIR-HSI) by analysing, on a seed-by-seed basis, several seeds simultaneously in comparison to NIR spectroscopy and UPLC as the reference method. To achieve this goal, discrimination—partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA)—models and regression—partial least squares (PLS)—models were developed. The results obtained by NIR-HSI are compared to the results obtained with NIR spectroscopy and UPLC instruments. This study has shown the potential of NIR hyperspectral imaging to assess the quality/homogeneity of the pesticide coating on seeds.

Keywords: cereal seeds, pesticide coating, NIR hyperspectral imaging