Combining discriminant analysis and neural networks for corn variety identification

Variety identification is an indispensable tool to assure grain purity and quality. Based on machine vision and pattern recognition, five China corn varieties were identified according to their external features. Images of non-touching corn kernels were acquired using a flat scanner. A total of 17 geometric features, 13 shape and 28 color features were extracted from color images of corn kernels. Two optimal feature sets were generated by stepwise discriminant analysis, and used as inputs to classifiers. A two-stage classifier combining distance discriminant and a back propagation neural network (BPNN) was built for identification. On the first stage, corn kernels were divided into three types: white, yellow and mixed corn by distance discriminant analysis. And then different varieties in the same type were identified by an improved BPNN classifier. The classification accuracies of BAINUO 6, NONGDA 86, NONGDA 108, GAOYOU 115, and NONGDA 4967 were 100, 94, 92, 88 and 100%, respectively.