Correlation and determination of the Metabolizable Energy (ME) of tropical forage with nutrient content for ruminants

The metabolizable energy (ME) of tropical forages measured by in vivo method in ruminants had a high degree of accuracy but requires a long time and is expensive. One method that can be done is the ME estimation model. The objectives of the present study were carried out to investigate the relationship between tropical forage nutrient content and ME for ruminants as well as determine and validate a model for estimating ME of tropical forage based on nutrient content. A total of 26 forage samples consisting of 14 types of grass and 12 legumes were obtained after data pre-processing or data cleaning and data normalization. Forage samples will be grouped into 3, Grass + Legume (G+L=26), grass (R=14), and legume (L=12). The database used is Crude Protein (CP), Extract Ether (EE), Neutral Detergent Fiber (NDF), Acid Detergent Fiber (ADF), and hemicellulose as well as ME with in vivo experiments. The initial stage is preprocessing data. Nutrient content and ME were analyzed using Pearson Correlation and followed by multiple linear regression to determine the ME estimation model. However, validated used the mean absolute deviation (MAD), root means square error (RMSE), and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE). The results showed that there was a significant and highly significantly correlated between nutrient composition and ME in the Grass + Legume, Grass, and Legume groups so it could be used to determine ME. There are 9 regression equations with significance and have high R2 and after being validated with the lowest MAD, RMSE, and MAPE values, three regression equations are obtained with one each for each group Grass + Legume (G+L), Grass (R), and Legumes (L). It is concluded that the regression equation of ME of tropical forage is MER+L = 12.429 – 0.122 ADF for Grass + Legume, EMR = 15.609 – 0.115 NDF for Grass, and EML = 3.726 – 0.186 CP for Legume