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Predicting dry matter digestibility from acid detergent fibre levels in grasses as affected by a pretreatment with neutral detergent
Author(s) -
McLeod Mordaunt N.,
Minson Dennis J.
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
journal of the science of food and agriculture
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.782
H-Index - 142
eISSN - 1097-0010
pISSN - 0022-5142
DOI - 10.1002/jsfa.2740250805
Subject(s) - dry matter , neutral detergent fiber , chemistry , extraction (chemistry) , zoology , chromatography , food science , biology
Acid detergent fibre was determined on 50 grass samples of known in vivo dry matter digestibility with and without a preliminary extraction with neutral detergent. Pretreatment with neutral detergent reduced the mean yield of acid detergent fibre from 41.5 to 36.8%. This decrease in acid detergent fibre was mainly due to a reduction in the level of ash which accounted for 57% of the difference in fibre level. The error in predicting dry matter digestibility of all feeds from acid detergent fibre was ±3.5 digestibility units and was increased to ±3.8 units following neutral detergent pretreatment. When acid detergent fibre was expressed on an ash‐free basis the corresponding residual standard deviations were ±4.4 and ±4.5 units, respectively. It was concluded that a pretreatment with neutral detergent or expressing results on an ash‐free basis did not improve the accuracy in predicting dry matter digestibility from acid detergent fibre.