Forage and feed analysis with NIR spectroscopy

Alfalfa is a legume that is grown all over the world because of its high protein content and rapid digestibility for animal feed, mainly for livestock. Nowadays, due to the nature of the primary activity itself, various controls are carried out to determine the quality of the product, especially for export to the Chinese and Persian Gulf markets. One of the main parameters determining the quality of alfalfa is crude protein (CP), but other parameters such as acid detergent fibre (ADF) and neutral detergent fibre (NDF) determine the nutritional value of the fodder and the terms of trade in its commercialisation.

Table 1. Quality of alfalfa (less than 10% grasses) for marketable forage according to USDA Livestock, Hay & Grain Market News (Putnam and Undersander, 2006).

In conclusion, the use of real-time NIR spectroscopy is becoming more and more widespread in the animal feed sector and particularly in feed analysis, applications which are now extending to the introduction of this technology online for the monitoring of the entire manufacturing process.