Environments, Volume 10, Issue 12
December 2023 - 27 articles
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Cover Story: The excessive excretion of nitrogen (N) by farm animals can pose severe environmental risks; hence, continuous monitoring of N excretion is imperative. In the present study, near-infrared reflectance (NIR) spectra of wet feces were employed to construct chemometric models for the prediction of N digestibility using artificial neural networks (ANNs). The objective was to develop a real-time, in situ, intelligent tool to monitor fecal N excretion using the rabbit as the animal model. Our results indicated that the combined use of NIR and ANN produced highly accurate models to predict N digestibility and, in conjunction with feed intake data, can precisely estimate fecal N excretion to the environment. View this paper