Comparison of selected physical parameters of rapeseed cultivars

Rapeseed is an important alternate oilseed crop in central Europe, Poland. Technical progression in sustainable agriculture requires the need for further research in more and newer analytical methods to reduce the time of analysis and to minimize the costs routine of tests for the highest accuracy of the results. This possibility is provided by infrared (IR) and near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy. The paper presents various methods of measuring the basic quality parameters (moisture, damage and contamination of raw material) of winter rapeseed for cultivars: Abacus, Bellevue, and Adriana + Catana (concoction). Statistically significant differences resulting from various measurement systems between the results obtained by the means of sieve methods and infrared (IR) have been observed. A three-dimensional way of measuring the seed shape used in the three-dimensional particle size analyser (AWK 3D) suggests that it is more accurate than the measurement applying the two-dimensional method used in the shaker with a set of sieves. All tested cultivars were characterized by optimum moisture contents ranging within 6.0-7.4 %. The greatest differences have been found for the results in the case of the resistance method of moisture, which was damaging for seeds. The largest number of contaminants and damaged seeds has been noted in Bellevue and Adriana + Catana cultivars, which amounted to 7.45 % and 5.33 % respectively. The highest percentage share of rapeseeds for all cultivars has been observed on a sieve with 2 mm of mesh that had collected the largest quantity of Bellevue seeds (94.71 %). The mean 95.24 % of the tested rapeseeds had a spherical shape and 4.76 % have been recognized as contaminations or damaged seeds.