| Our primary objective was to determine if near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) can be used to predict in vitro true digestibility (IVTD) of bahiagrass (Paspalum notatum Flugge).;Bahiagrass samples (n=275) were analyzed for moisture, neutral detergent fiber (NDF), acid detergent fiber (ADF), crude protein (CP), and IVTD. A Unity SpectraStar RTW system spectrophotometer and partial least squares regression (PLS) were used to collect spectral data and create a calibration.;Regression analysis of the calibration generated R2 values of 0.844, 0.845, 0.907, 0.967, and 0.887 for moisture, NDF, ADF, CP, and IVTD respectively. The validation set yielded R2 values of 0.144, 0.660, 0.495, 0.918, and 0.561 respectively for the same properties.;Data suggest that NIRS may not be a good predictor of IVTD of bahiagrass. More work needs to be done in this area to determine if adding more diversity and range to the calibration with more equally distributed samples would improve NIRS prediction. |
