Near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy and multivariate calibration techniques applied to modelling the crude protein, fibre and fat content in rapeseed meal.

Near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) is often applied when a rapid quantification of major components in feed is required. This technique is preferred over the other analytical techniques due to the relatively few requirements concerning sample preparations, high efficiency and low costs of the analysis. In this study, NIRS was used to control the content of crude protein, fat and fibre in extracted rapeseed meal which was produced in the local industrial crushing plant. For modelling the NIR data, the partial least squares approach (PLS) was used. The satisfactory prediction errors were equal to 1.12, 0.13 and 0.45 (expressed in percentages referring to dry mass) for crude protein, fat and fibre content, respectively. To point out the key spectral regions which are important for modelling, uninformative variable elimination PLS, PLS with jackknife-based variable elimination, PLS with bootstrap-based variable elimination and the orthogonal partial least squares approach were compared for the data studied. They enabled an easier interpretation of the calibration models in terms of absorption bands and led to similar predictions for test samples compared to the initial models.