Project Number: 3655-31000-024-07
Project Type: Nonfunded Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Sep 28, 2012
End Date: Aug 31, 2015

Objective:
To maintain a monitoring program of near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) Consortium member instruments and perform standardization of NIRS Consortium member instruments to facilitate transfer of calibation equations; (2) Refine and maintain a database of spectral and chemical information to be used to generate NIRS calibrations; (3) Identify samples that can be used to update NIRS calibrations for standard traits that describe the nutritional value of forages and fuel value of biomass feedstocks; (4) Update NIRS calibrations for the NIRS Consortium for (a) commercial laboratories, (b) alfalfa plant breeders, and (c) specialized groups (e.g., UCS); and (5) Conduct research on improved methods of local and global calibration of NIRS for novel traits, either of nutritional relevance or related to the use of forages as biomass feedstocks.

Approach:
The NIRS Forage and Feed Testing Consortium (NIRSC) is an association of commercial laboratories, universities, government groups, plant research companies, and instrument companies. The consortium members collaborate to unify knowledge, instrument accuracy of component analysis, and application of NIRS technology for the analysis of forages, feeds, and feedstocks. The laboratories share in efforts and costs to produce standardized calibrations for use by members. The United States Dairy Forage Research Center in Madison, Wisconsin, owns and maintains the master NIRS instrument (a Foss 6500) that has been used for the standardization of all of the NIRS instruments owned by members of the NIRSC. Both parties are interested in improving and extending the application of NIRS technology for rapid analysis of feed and forage samples for a wide variety of constituents pertinent to feeding livestock as well as assessing forages for other uses. This includes the improvement of calibrations for constituents that have long been analyzed by NIRS such as NDF and crude protein and the development of calibrations for new constituents as they are determined to be relevant for livestock diet formulation, forage breeding or the use of forages for biofuel or biochemical production.