Analysis of oil content of groundnuts by nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry

One hundred groundnut germplasm accessions were analysed for their oil content by the standard Soxhlet extraction procedure using petroleum ether: the results were compared using functional analysis with those obtained with a commercial nuclear magnetic resonance (n.m.r.) spectrometer. On another 78 experimental samples, oil content was first obtained using the n.m.r. method and the Soxhlet values were predicted using the above functional relationship. On the 78 samples the predicted values were highly correlated (r=0.972) with those obtained by Soxhlet extraction. The n.m.r. method is rapid, easy, acurate and non‐destructive.