The relationship between instrumental leaf grade and Shirley Analyzer trash content in cotton lint

With the increasing acceptance of high volume instrument (HVI™) instrumental leaf grade index in both domestic and international trading, there is a continued interest in the relationship between instrumental leaf grade and equivalent trash gravimetric content (% percent by mass) from cotton customers and regulators. Due to the complexity of not only trash type, size, and its weight distribution but also the nature of HVI and gravimetric methods, it is an on-going challenge to examine such a relationship. In this study, the Shirley Analyzer (SA) was used to determine the gravimetric cotton trash in percent by mass (%). This system is the traditional cotton trash reference method that is still utilized as a routine tool in the cotton industry, despite being a destructive process that is both labor-intensive and time-consuming. This study first investigated the correlations between three SA trash readings (SAvisible, SAinvisible, and SAtotal) and respective leaf grade categories, and it revealed a general t...