Near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS)

NIRS measurements reflect the types and proportions of organic structures within a material. As such they are widely used for the routine analysis of foods and their nutritional evaluation. The technique might therefore be expected to provide a solution to the problem of determining degradability. Current indications are that NIRS has the ability to estimate nitrogen degradability with a high degree of precision and considerable accuracy with r2 values of 0.80-0.87 being claimed.