Potential Applications of Computer Vision in Quality Inspection of Rice: A Review

Among the cereals, rice is the major foodstuff for a large part of the world’s population. Due to its tremendous importance in the global market, its qualitative economic aspects during processing have always been attended by producers. As the most delicate of the cereals, rice needs the utmost care during post-harvest handling and processing, because in most cases, it is consumed as whole kernel. The growing demand for production of rice with high-quality and safety standards has increased the need for its accurate, fast and objective quality monitoring. Computer vision techniques, as novel technologies, can provide an automated, nondestructive and cost-effective way to achieve these requirements. In recent years, various studies have been conducted to evaluate rice qualitative features based on computer vision techniques. This paper presents the theoretical and technical principles of computer vision for nondestructive quality assessment of rice combined with a review of the recent achievements and applications for quality inspection and monitoring of the product.