Application and Prospect of Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy in Forage Analysis

Forage was the material basis of animal husbandry production, and its quality is directly related to the quality of animal products. It was very important ot control the forage quality and detect the composition of forage raw materials in forage production. Predication of forage quality was often completed by the traditional and classical methods in the past, which were complex, time consuming and expensive, and could not acquire the nutritional value of forage timely. Near infrared reflectance spectroscopy was a highly efficient and rapid modern analysis technique developed in 1970’s. It comprehensively applied the latest research results of computer technique, spectroscopy and chemometrics, and has been widely used in various fields owing to its unique advantages such as being timely, less expensive, non-destructive, and so on. Near infrared reflectance spectroscopy has gained more and more importance though its application to forage analysis was very late. Presently, not only conventional composition (such as moisture, dry matter, crude protein, crude fiber, crude fat, crude ash neutral detergent fiber, acid detergent fiber, etc.), but also non-conventional composition (including minerals, trace elements, enzyme and anti-nutritional factors etc.) and anti-nutritional factors in forage were determined by means of near infrared reflectance spectroscopy. Testing and analysizing the conventional composition in forage was the traditional applied field of near infrared reflectance spectroscopy, a lot of studies of which were done and it has already been one of the standard methods of testing the conventional composition. Forage bioavaibility was also evaluated by near infrared reflectance spectroscopy, so as to assess the utilization rate and nutritional value of forage. Moreover, near infrared spectroscopy could be used successfully to predict the botanical composition in grassland and leaf/stem ratios. Near infrared spectroscopy technique and its application and prospect in forage analysis were reviewed in the present paper.