Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopic Analysis of Sodium Chlorite-Treated Forages and Other Plant Materials

The ability of near infrared reflectance spectroscopy to measure the fiber content and in vitro rumen digestibility of feedstuffs treated with sodium chlorite was determined. Six hays (alfalfa, tall fescue, orchardgrass, red clover, timothy, and a grass-legume hay), two straws (barley and wheat), four stovers (two corn and two soybean), three hulls (peanut, rice, and soybean), and corn cobs were treated with sodium chlorite at 11 concentrations to give .000 to .394 g of sodium chlorite per g of feed (dried at 60C). Analysis results for the treated feeds using every third sample as a validation set gave standard errors of analysis and r 2 as follows for the validation set: protein .6, .99; neutral detergent fiber 3.2, .95 ; acid detergent fiber 2.2, .95; lignin 1.5, .92; hemicellulose 3.1, .91; total carbohydrate 3.4, .94; cellulose 1.9, .94; digestible ADF 6.8, .92; digestible NDF 5.8, .95; and total digestible organic matter 4.0 and .96. These values were similar to those generated for a second set of untreated feeds (67 samples of 5 feeds), showing that treatment did not reduce the validity of using near infrared reflectance spectroscopy to predict feed quality. Studies involving various calibration sets showed that satisfactory results could be obtained