Determination of main components and anaerobic rumen digestibility of aquatic plants in vitro using near-infrared-reflectance spectroscopy.

A near-infrared-reflectance (NIR) spectroscopy-based method is established to determine the main components of aquatic plants as well as their anaerobic rumen biodegradability. The developed method is more rapid and accurate compared to the conventional chemical analysis and biodegradability tests. Moisture, volatile solid, Klason lignin and ash in entire aquatic plants could be accurately predicted using this method with coefficient of determination (r(2)) values of 0.952, 0.916, 0.939 and 0.950, respectively. In addition, the anaerobic rumen biodegradability of aquatic plants, represented as biogas and methane yields, could also be predicted well. The algorithm of continuous wavelet transform for the NIR spectral data pretreatment is able to greatly enhance the robustness and predictive ability of the NIR spectral analysis. These results indicate that NIR spectroscopy could be used to predict the main components of aquatic plants and their anaerobic biodegradability.