Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS) for determination of chemical entities of natural pasture from Ethiopia

In the mixed crop-livestock farming system of Ethiopia, natural pasture production is related to seasonal rainfall distribution which is restricted to only a few months of the year.Livestock owners in this country experience periods of excess forage in the rain season where preserving it through haymaking became tradition as a strategy for the periods of scarcity, particularly the dry season of a year.Forage can also be stored as standing hay, the cheapest way of conserving forage, in a place like pastoral and agro-pastoral production system where a decline in quality can be tolerated.Mixed grass-legume pasture samples from different agro-ecology were collected and portion of the samples were analyzed conventionally to determine their chemical composition (dry matter, ash, crude protein, neutral detergent fiber, acid detergent fiber, lignin) and in vitro dry matter digestibility to validate the NIRS calibration.NIRS was evaluated by the coefficient of determination in calibration (R 2 ), standard error of calibration (SEC), and standard error of cross validation (SECV).The results showed NIRS is extremely useful for predicting nutrient contents as compared to conventional chemical analysis methods which are not difficult to conduct, but they are expensive in terms of time and resources.