Premium
A NOTE ON THE SUITABILITY OF THE IN VITRO DIGESTIBILITY TECHNIQUE FOR VERY SMALL PLANT SAMPLES
Author(s) -
McLeod M. N.
Publication year - 1972
Publication title -
grass and forage science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.716
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1365-2494
pISSN - 0142-5242
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2494.1972.tb01218.x
Subject(s) - in vivo , in vitro , grinding , zoology , chemistry , mathematics , chromatography , food science , biology , materials science , microbiology and biotechnology , biochemistry , composite material
The two‐stage in vitro digestibility technique was scaled down to use 0.1 g samples. The accuracy of predicting in vivo DM digestibility by the use of micro‐samples was studied, using 35 samples of four grass species of known in vivo digestibility. When the sample size was reduced from the normal 0.5 g to 0.1 g, the residual standard deviation of the regression relating in vitro to in vivo DM digestibility was increased from ±2.5 to ±3.4 digestibility units. Grinding the samples more finely than through a 1.0 mm screen did not improve the accuracy of predicting in vivo digestibility. It was concluded that the in vitro method may be used with micro‐samples where necessary, but with less accuracy than the macro‐technique. For maximum accuracy, the use of standards of known in vivo digestibility is necessary.