Optical characteristics of fermented cocoa pod husk based on Nears Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy and evaluation of its quality as animal feed materials

Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRs) is one of the alternative methods to determine chemical characteristic of the animal feed due to its several benefits. The purpose of this study was to determine optical characteristics and the quality of fermented cacao pod husk as animal feed by NIRs method. Totally eighteen samples of fermented cocoa pod husk were analyzed by wet analysis consisting of as dry matter, crude protein, crude fiber, crude fat, crude ash, and nitrogen-free extract material. Spectrum acquisition was carried out using a Thermo Nicolet Antaris II tool. Chemical analysis is intended to compare the data from chemical analysis and the NIRS method. Spectrum data were processed using partial least squares (PLS) with multiplicative scatter correction (MSC) and de-Trending (DT) pre-treatment methods. The results of the study indicated that the NIRS was good prediction for dry matter, crude protein, and crude fat with the model of MSC pre-treatment. The crude ash parameter is only able to predict well on the MSC pre-treatment method with evaluation values. In conclusion, NIRS can be applied to determine animal nutritive values by means of using partial least squares (PLS), principal component regression (PCR) and other regression approaches.