Rapid Starch Evaluation in Fresh Cassava Root Using a Developed Portable Visible and Near-Infrared Spectrometer

[Image: see text] Starch content is an important parameter indicating the state of harvest maturity of fresh cassava root. Nowadays, the methods used for estimating the starch content in the field are the measurement of root weight, size, or snapping force. These methods are simple but the results are rather incorrect. For this reason, a developed portable visible and near-infrared spectrometer(350–1050 nm) was used to estimate rapidly and nondestructively starch content in fresh cassava root. The best starch prediction model received from the full wavelength region was able to predict the starch content with a correlation coefficient of prediction (r(p)) of 0.825, standard errors of prediction of 2.502%, and bias of −0.115%. Moreover, the predicted values were not significantly different from the actual values obtained from the standard method at 95% confidence intervals. It was also noted that the top position of the root was a good representative for starch prediction. In addition, this position was easy to be measured in the field before harvesting.