RESEARCHERS hope a joint project between Agriculture Victoria and the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) will allow farmers to value add their pulse crops.
Work is being done by Agriculture Victoria to develop new sensor technologies that will be able to be used on-farm to allow better segregations of pulses.
At present pulses are generally only split into human consumption and stock feed grades, with size and colour the criteria.
Frosted and rain-damaged seed are likely to be downgraded to stock feed quality.
However, Ag Vic research scientist Cassandra Walker said work was done to develop more sophisticated quality testing for pulse crops, in specific lentils, field peas and chickpeas.
Dr Walker said imaging technologies would help rapidly measure grain quality.
The benefits for growers are obvious.
They would be able to segregate pulses on quality on-farm and leverage significant quality premiums for their top grade product.
Dr Walker said the concept had been proven, the test was to now make the technology scaleable.
"We are aiming to transfer these developments from within the lab to grain processing systems that can be used during harvest, allowing growers the option to segregate grain prior to delivery," Dr Walker said.
The focus is on developing a system that could easily be used by farmers on-farm.
"There is testing equipment used by bulk handlers, this is about creating something affordable for farmers to allow them the chance to get the best prices for their crop overall," Dr Walker said.
It will be a boost for the pulse sector as a whole, which has lagged behind as more sophisticated farmgate quality testing equipment has been made available for cereal producers.
In recent years there have been significant advances in on-farm testing technology, with products that can measure the quality of cereals at harvest, such as grain moisture and protein readily available.
"We are particularly keen to take new laboratory-based segregation tools and demonstrate their value on-farm," Dr Walker said.
"To achieve this, our grain quality and field scientists are working closely with the precision ag industry and growers to demonstrate the potential value at farm scale."
The research is being undertaken in Horsham, at Agriculture Victoria's Grains Innovation Park where new high through-put spectral imaging systems are being used to develop grain quality algorithms.
"The program will test the ability of this technology to segregate grain for quality defects due to frost, heat, disease, and contaminants such as snails or foreign seed - but the real value will be tested on-farm," Dr Walker said.