*2.2.1 Mattson bean cooker*

One standard method of measuring cooking time in pulses is to evaluate using a Mattson bean cooker [101]. The equipment is easy to use, cost-effective, and generates unbiased data compared to other methods [90]. The use of Mattson cooker is recommended in grain genetic improvement for evaluating new varieties [66]. Mattson first developed the Mattson bean cooker, having 100 plungers [102], but was later redesigned to have 25 plungers [103]. The usage of the equipment involves placing individual presoaked seeds on each of the saddle on the rack such that the tip of each plunger comes in contact with the surface of the seed. The weight of each plunger can be optimized to suit the size of the target grain by adjusting the number of lead buckshot inside each plunger. To initiate the cooking test, the lower part of the cooking rack is immersed in a boiling water bath up to half of its height. When a seed reaches tenderness, the plunger penetrates that particular seed and drops a short distance through the hole in the saddle. The top of a plunger that has dropped (penetrated a seed) will be lower than the top of the plungers which are yet to drop. The scenario makes it visibly easy to identify the plunger that has penetrated its seed [66, 90]. The cooking time for a set of seeds (25) has been explained differently by researchers; the cooking time was defined as the time required for 100% of the seeds to get penetrated [104]. In an additional study, the cooking time was recorded as the time 92% of seeds got penetrated [105]. Operating the Mattson cooker requires the uninterrupted attention of the user; the user manually records the time each plunger penetrates a seed the situation becomes more critical when multiple plungers penetrate at the same time. To overcome the bottleneck of manual recording several researchers have reported the use of an automated Mattson cooker where the cooking time is automatically recorded [66, 90, 106].
