Y. Acun1, S. Gürsoy1*

1Department of Department of Agricultural Machinery and Technology Engineering, Dicle University, 21280 Diyarbakır, Türkiye

(Manuscript received 18.02.2025; accepted for publication 17.05.2025)

Abstract. Accurate and rapid measurement of the moisture content of the grain is one of the most important factors for agricultural production and industry. Until today, many capacitance-based grain moisture meters have been commercially developed to measure grain moisture samples to an accuracy of ±0.1% w.b. However, several factors such as moisture content, bulk density, temperature, and varieties of grain samples significantly affect the accuracy and the precision of moisture meters. Therefore, a study was conducted to evaluate the effects of moisture content, temperature, variety of grain samples on the measurement accuracy of a capacitive moisture meter for corn. For this purpose, three experiments were carried out by considering different moisture content, temperature and varieties of grain corn. The results of the experiments showed that moisture content, temperature and variety of corn significantly affected the accuracy of the capacitive moisture meter. The difference between the moisture values determined by the meter and the oven was the lowest at the 23-24% moisture level of corn samples. The meter reading was progressively higher and lower than the oven at the lower and higher moisture content levels than 23-24%, respectively. The difference between the meter and the oven was the lowest at the 24-25°C temperature of corn samples. These results suggest that commercial moisture meters need to be optimized in the future to improve their accuracy by considering the grain variety, moisture content, bulk density, and temperature.