ARS | Publication request: Measurement of lipid supplements in poultry feed by infrared spectroscopy

Submitted to: International Journal of Poultry Science
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: October 4, 2011
Publication Date: October 17, 2011
Citation: Holser, R.A., Hawkins, S.A. 2011. Measurement of lipid supplements in poultry feed by infrared spectroscopy. International Journal of Poultry Science. 10(9):677-679.

Interpretive Summary: Supplements are frequently added to foods and animal feeds to improve nutritional quality. Fish oil contains highly unsaturated fats that are known to provide numerous health benefits but are also unstable and degrade rapidly. Reflected light can be used to measure the amount of fish oil and the extent of its degradation. These measurements are useful for food processors and feed mill operators that need to rapidly determine the composition and quality of supplements used in formulated products.

Technical Abstract: Rapid measurement of a fatty acid supplement in poultry feed formulations was performed using near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy with chemometric analysis. A standard feed formulation was amended with up to 10 wt% fatty acid supplement containing docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and scanned from 10,000 cm-1 to 4000 cm-1. Spectra were evaluated by principal component analysis (PCA) to detect outliers followed by partial least square (PLS) regression. Models were developed with first derivative spectra. A typical dataset of 36 spectra was subdivided with 30 spectra used for model calibration and 6 spectra for the validation set. The PLS model produced a regression coefficient of 0.98314 with an RMSEC value of 0.44772. This technique provided a robust method to analyze the amount of fatty acids in supplemented feeds.