Track 2-1-2: Forage Conservation, Value Addition and Balanced Nutrition
Description
Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum) is an annual forage grass species which is widely cultivated in South Korea. It grows extensively in the southern part of the country and is an important component of winter forage for livestock. Each year, in Korea, over one million hectares of Italian ryegrass is converted to round bale haylage. Quality control is an important field in forage utilization research and marketing, and involves the estimation of forage nutrient content. Wet chemistry is the traditional method used to analyze the nutrient content of forage. However, this technique is often destructive, expensive, and time consuming, and it is not suitable for real-time feedstuff analysis. Near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), on the other hand, is an alternative technique that has several major advantages over traditional methods. The analysis of silage nutrient content, using NIR, conventionally includes the drying and milling of samples. However, these processes can lead to reduction of volatile acids, which are important components of silage. NIRS can be affected by spectral regions, drying and grinding methods, particle size, packing density and the temperature of samples (Reeves and Blosser, 1991). In order to obtain accurate NIRS results, sample preparation, and the measurement conditions of the calibration set and predicted samples, need to match. The objectives of this study were to (1) assess the usefulness of NIRS in determining the nutritional composition and fermentative parameters of fresh coarse samples of Italian ryegrass haylage, (2) assess the predictive value of various NIRS calibration models, and (3) explore cost-effective and time saving methods for forage quality estimation, in field populations.
Included in
Prediction of the Chemical Composition and Fermentation Parameters of Fresh Coarse Italian Ryegrass Haylage Using Near Infrared Spectroscopy
Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum) is an annual forage grass species which is widely cultivated in South Korea. It grows extensively in the southern part of the country and is an important component of winter forage for livestock. Each year, in Korea, over one million hectares of Italian ryegrass is converted to round bale haylage. Quality control is an important field in forage utilization research and marketing, and involves the estimation of forage nutrient content. Wet chemistry is the traditional method used to analyze the nutrient content of forage. However, this technique is often destructive, expensive, and time consuming, and it is not suitable for real-time feedstuff analysis. Near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), on the other hand, is an alternative technique that has several major advantages over traditional methods. The analysis of silage nutrient content, using NIR, conventionally includes the drying and milling of samples. However, these processes can lead to reduction of volatile acids, which are important components of silage. NIRS can be affected by spectral regions, drying and grinding methods, particle size, packing density and the temperature of samples (Reeves and Blosser, 1991). In order to obtain accurate NIRS results, sample preparation, and the measurement conditions of the calibration set and predicted samples, need to match. The objectives of this study were to (1) assess the usefulness of NIRS in determining the nutritional composition and fermentative parameters of fresh coarse samples of Italian ryegrass haylage, (2) assess the predictive value of various NIRS calibration models, and (3) explore cost-effective and time saving methods for forage quality estimation, in field populations.
