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ARS Home » Southeast Area » New Orleans, Louisiana » Southern Regional Research Center » Commodity Utilization Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #73976
Title: COMPARISON OF VISUAL AND AUTOMATED COLORIMETER FOR EIGHTEEN OIL SAMPLES - AN INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIVE STUDY

Author
item Wan, Peter
item HURLEY, T - LOU ANA FOODS
item GUY, J - LOU ANA FOODS
item BERNER, D - AOCS

Submitted to: Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/26/1997
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: Color of edible oil is an important quality factor for the processors as well as the end users. The color determination of oil is traditionally done by visual measurement which subjects operator to operator variations. This international collaborative study on oil color of eighteen samples from seven different types of oils demonstrated that good correlation between readings from a microcomputer based automated colorimeter with the conventional visual color measutements can be established.

Technical Abstract: Color as a fundamental quality of edible oils has been determined primarily by visual comparison methods for many decades. The automatic colorimeters introduced recently made it possible to replace the manually operated visual color instrument which requires experience to master and is often subject to the operator variability. Previous study using an automatic colorimeter, Colourscan, to measure the color of refined and refined-bleached cottonseed oils showed good agreement (r to the second = 0.99) with visual color measurement using Lovibond - AOCS Color Scale (JAOCS 72:455-458, 1995). The current work is to establish a broad scale correlation between the automated colorimeter and visual color measurement. In this international effort, factory processed refined, and refined-bleached-deodorized (RBD) canola, corn, cottonseed, peanut, sunflower and soybean as well as refined palm olein, RBD palm, washed-dried dered and deodorized tallow were used. Fourteen labs from the United States and Canada, and sixteen labs from twelve countries outside of North America, participated in this collaborative study. The final results of this study, with statistical analyses, are reported.