Interlaboratory comparison of soybean protein and oil determinations

Iowa State University coordinated an interlaboratory comparison study of Kjeldahl protein and ether oil extraction methods. Blind duplicates of 10 clean, single-variety soybean samples were sent to 30 laboratories grouped in 3 categories of 10 each in public (government and university), commercial and processor facilities. Five of the commercial laboratories were AOCS-certified. Standard deviations among laboratory means across all samples were 3.87 and 1.82 percentage points (dry basis) for protein and oil, respectively (0.48 and 0.27, respectively, for the AOCS-certified laboratories). The average differences between blind duplicates of a sample were 0.71 percentage points for protein and 0.87 percentage points for oil (0.28 and 0.45, respectively, for the certified laboratories). Average standard deviations across laboratories on an individual sample were 2.37 and 1.71 percentage points for protein and oil, respectively (1.87 and 0.99, respectively, for the certified laboratories.