Evaluation the nutrient composition of extracted sunflower meal samples, determined with wet chemistry and near infrared spectroscopy

Abstract

Twenty extracted sunflower meal (SFM) samples were collected and analysed with classical laboratory methods and near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). From the results, the variance of the nutrients, the accuracy of NIRS prediction and the interaction of the different nutrients have been evaluated. The results showed that NIRS provides high accuracy for crude protein, amino acids, fibre fractions and total phosphorus. The reliability for crude fat, crude ash and sugar predictions was however lower. The relationship between the measured and estimated amino acid contents was significant in all cases with high correlation coefficients. The crude protein content of the SFM samples showed a positive correlation with the crude ash, phosphorous and sugar contents, and a negative correlation with all fibre fractions. According to our results, the amino acid composition of the sunflower meal protein is not constant. The ratio of methionine and histidine HIS is higher, while that of cysteine, tyrosine, arginine, isoleucine, leucine, valine and phenylalanine is lower when the protein content of SFM increase.

Keywords

• extracted sunflower meal
• chemical composition
• nirs
• nutrient correlations
• protein quality