Optimisation of the predictive ability of NIR models to estimate nutritional parameters in elephant grass through...

Elephant grass is a tropical forage widely used for livestock feed. The analytical techniques traditionally used for its nutritional evaluation are costly and time consuming. Alternatively, Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) technology has been used as a rapid analysis technique. However, in crops with high variability due to genetic improvement, predictive models quickly lose accuracy and must be recalibrated. The use of non-linear models such as LOCAL calibrations could mitigate these issues, although a number of parameters need to be optimized to obtain accurate results. The objective of this work was to compare the predictive results obtained with global NIRS calibrations and with LOCAL calibrations, paying special attention to the configuration parameters of the models. The results obtained showed that the prediction errors with the LOCAL models were between 1.6 and 17.5 % lower. The best results were obtained in most cases with a low number of selected samples (n = 100-250) and a high number of PLS terms (n = 20). This configuration allows a reduced computation time with high accuracy, becoming a valuable alternative for analytical determinations that require ruminal fluid, which would improve the welfare of the animals by avoiding the need to surgically prepare animals to estimate the nutritional value of the feeds.