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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Food Quality Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #319833
Research Project: Rapid Methods for Quality and Safety Inspection of Small Grain Cereals

Location: Food Quality Laboratory

Title: Calculator to determine moister content

Author
item Delwiche, Stephen - Steve
item GELROTH, JANETTE - Aib International, Manhattan, Ks

Submitted to: AACC International
Publication Type: Other
Publication Acceptance Date: 9/16/2015
Publication Date: 9/30/2015
Citation: Delwiche, S.R., Gelroth, J. 2015. Calculator to determine moister content. AACC International. Available: http://methods.aaccnet.org/default.aspx.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: AACC International (AACCI), formerly called the American Association of Cereal Chemists, is the world’s premier scientific and trade organization for the cereal grains. One of its services is to develop and provide standard, or “approved” methods for assessing the chemical and physical nature of the cereals in raw or processed formats. While methods development and release have been underway for more than 50 years, and continue today, the release of accompanying tools (videos, slide presentation files, Web-based calculators, or spreadsheet files) that provide hands-on detail to methods is a much newer development. Known as method “eXtras,” these additions have come about in the past 10 years. This newest addition is a spreadsheet application designed to accompany a longstanding method, moisture determination by gravimetric (oven drying) analysis, Approved Method 44-15.02. Up to 20 test samples may be recorded in each sheet without additional modification. Each test sample analysis may include up to three repetitions. The mean and range of moisture content are calculated, based on the number of valid repetitions. A bar graph displaying the mean moisture contents appears at the bottom of each calculator sheet. The sheets are formatted for direct printing. The eXtra is designed to handle the most common ways in which the method is performed, these being when the weights of the empty pans are measured and recorded at the time of the analysis, and when the weights of the empty pans are known already and stored in a lookup table, and are then brought into the calculation sheet by cross-referencing to a pan identifier.