Limited supply of quality feed is the most common problem limiting livestock productivity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Routine feed evaluation is indispensable for formulating balanced rations, feed characterization, safety, and minimizing the environmental impact of livestock. Traditional wet chemistry has not met this demand in SSA because it is time consuming, expensive, reliant on imported reagents and equipment that requires regular maintenance. Near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) is a rapid and accurate alternative. The NIRS can help meet the need to characterize locally available forages and feeds on the continent, thus allowing formulation of optimally balanced and safe rations, facilitating establishment of nutritive value-based pricing, and improving feed marketing and environmental stewardship. Though several NIRS systems have been purchased in many SSA countries, few are currently used. Reasons include high upfront costs, lack of requisite technical capacity, lack of access to comprehensive wet chemistry-based databases to develop and validate robust and accurate predictive equations, lack of access to or relevance of existing validated equations, and limited awareness about the value of NIRS. Recently developed portable devices can dramatically reduce cost, while providing flexibility and comparable accuracy to benchtop systems. Formation of NIRS consortia and communities of practice including public–private partnerships that link equipment, pool resources, and provide periodic training and troubleshooting, can address many of these problems. This paper elaborates the potential for using NIRS to improve feed analysis in SSA countries, the reasons for the low use of existing systems, and strategies to improve the adoption and use of NIRS.

中文翻译：

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近红外反射光谱法用于撒哈拉以南非洲国家草料营养价值分析

优质饲料供应有限是限制撒哈拉以南非洲 (SSA) 牲畜生产力的最常见问题。日常饲料评估对于制定平衡日粮、饲料特性、安全性和最大限度地减少牲畜对环境的影响是必不可少的。传统的湿化学在 SSA 中无法满足这一需求，因为它耗时、昂贵、依赖进口试剂和需要定期维护的设备。近红外反射光谱 (NIRS) 是一种快速准确的替代方法。NIRS 可以帮助满足表征非洲大陆当地可用草料和饲料的需求，从而允许制定最佳平衡和安全的口粮，促进建立基于营养价值的定价，并改善饲料营销和环境管理。尽管在许多 SSA 国家购买了几个 NIRS 系统，但目前使用的很少。原因包括高昂的前期成本、缺乏必要的技术能力、无法访问基于湿化学的综合数据库来开发和验证稳健且准确的预测方程、无法访问现有的已验证方程或缺乏相关性，以及对近红外光谱。最近开发的便携式设备可以显着降低成本，同时提供与台式系统相当的灵活性和准确性。NIRS 联盟和实践社区的形成，包括连接设备、汇集资源并提供定期培训和故障排除的公私合作伙伴关系，可以解决其中的许多问题。本文阐述了在 SSA 国家使用 NIRS 改进饲料分析的潜力，