Use of near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy for the rapid determination of the digestible energy and metabolizable energy content of corn fed to growing pigs

BACKGROUND: The ability of near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) to determine the digestible energy (DE) and metabolizable energy (ME) content of corn fed to growing pigs was tested. One hundred and seventeen corn samples, comprising different planting regions and varieties were collected from all over China in a three-year period. The samples were randomly split into a calibration set (n = 88) and a validation set (n = 29). The actual and calculated DE and ME content of the corn samples was determined by digestion-metabolism experiments and the prediction equations of Noblet and Perez (J Anim Sci. 71:3389–98,1993). The samples were then subjected to NIRS scanning and calibrations were performed by the modified partial least square (MPLS) regression method based on 77 different spectral pre-treatments. The NIRS equations based on the actually determined and calculated DE and ME were built separately and then validated using validation samples. RESULTS: The NIRS equations obtained from actually determined DE, the coefficient of determination for calibration (RSQ(cal)), cross-validation (R(2)(CV)), and validation (RSQ(v)) were 0.89, 0.87 and 0.86, and these values for determined ME were 0.87, 0.86 and 0.86. For the NIRS equations built from calculated DE, the RSQ(cal), R(2)(CV), and RSQ(v) values were 0.88, 0.85 and 0.84, and these values for calculated ME were 0.86, 0.84 and 0.82. Except for the equation based on calculated ME (RPD(v) = 2.38, < 2.50), the other three equations built from actually determined energy and calculated DE produced good prediction performance (RPD(v) ranging from 2.53 to 2.69, > 2.50) when applied to validation samples. CONCLUSION: These results indicate that NIRS can be used as a quantitative method for the rapid determination of the available energy in corn fed to growing pigs, and the NIRS equations based on the actually determined energy produced better predictive performance than those built from calculated energy values.