Short Communication: Near infrared reflectance spectroscopy accurately predicts the digestible energy content of barley for pigs

Zijlstra, R. T., Swift, M. L., Wang, L. F., Scott, T. A. and Edney, M. J. 2011. Short Communication:Near infrared reflectance spectroscopy accurately predicts the digestible energy content of barley for pigs. Can. J. Anim. Sci. 91: 301–304. Density, chicken apparent metabolizable energy (AME), and near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) were tested to predict the widely varying swine digestible energy (DE) content of barley. The DE content of 39 barley samples ranged from 2686 to 3163 kcal kg −1 (90% DM) in grower pigs. The R 2 between DE content and density (0.14) and broiler chicken AME content (0.18 and 0.56, without and with enzyme, respectively) was low. In contrast, the coefficient of determination to predict swine DE content for ground barley samples using NIRS was respectable for external validation (R 2 =0.74) and internal cross validation (1-VR=0.79), but more robust calibrations should be developed for commercial application.