Norwegian Journal of Agricultural Sciences : accuracy of near infrared reflectance spectroscopy in the determination of IVDMD in forage

Abstract

In modem forage breeding the use of Near lnfrared Reflectance Spectroscopy is becoming more and more common for estimating quality parameters like IVDMD and protein. In this paper a systematic study of the method is made and compared with the conventional method described by Tilley & Terry (1963). The results show that there is good agreement between the method based on the NIRS technique and the conventional method. However, compared with the conventional method the NIRS method gives much more stable and repeatable results (std = 1.24 for the conventional method, but std = 0.30 for the NIRS-based method).