This study was carried out using a spectral database consisting of 394 samples of fresh total mixed ration (TMR) from dairy farms located at Northern Spain. Cloning sets of different size and structure were evaluated for the transfer of the large TMR spectral database obtained on a Foss NIRSystems monochromator to 2 different portable near-infrared devices: one diode array instrument and another based on linear variable filters. The cloning matrix that produced the best matching between instruments was then used to transfer the TMR spectral library to the 2 portable instruments. Once the database had been transferred, calibration equations were developed to compare the predictive ability of the equations obtained in the benchtop and portable instruments. In comparison with the monochromator predictive ability, the calibration equations developed with the near-infrared portable instruments displayed a high and similar accuracy for most of the studied parameters related to TMR composition, enabling their use for predicting TMR quality at the farm level.
Keywords: database transferring; near infrared (NIR) instrument standardization; on-farm NIR analysis; portable instruments; total mixed rations.
The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. and Fass Inc. on behalf of the American Dairy Science Association®. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).