Estimation of nutritional value of livestock feeds is essential for improving animal productivity. Assessing feed quality is best achieved by feeding animals under controlled conditions and measuring livestock gain or milk yield. However, livestock feeding trials are expensive and time consuming. The next best option is to use “wet chemistry”, in other words to use conventional laboratory analysis to measure key metrics such as digestibility and nitrogen concentrations. But this is also time consuming and requires infrastructure and trained lab personal. In this context Near-infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS) is a useful tool to estimate feed quality cheaply and rapidly. While a small conventional feed lab might analyse 50 feed samples a month, with NIRS it would be feasible to predict feed quality of about 3000 samples over the same period. NIRS is a promising technology in crop improvement programmes for quick screening of large numbers of samples in a short time for quality traits. It works on the principle of correlating optical spectral signatures with physico-chemical properties of the sample matrix. NIRS is used globally in feed evaluation studies and for rapid crop improvement/ breeding programs.
Weight gain and enteric methane production of cattle fed on tropical grasses
