Abstract
In this work it has been evaluated the effectiveness of near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) for the estimation of two constituents affecting the nutritional quality of the seeds of one-flowered vetch (Vicia articulata Hornem.): protein and L-canavanine, a toxic non-protein amino acid. The NIRS calibrations showed good statistics with coefficients of multiple determination (R2) of 0.97 for total protein and 0.95 for L-canavanine. The developed equations were further used to estimate the contents of protein and L-canavanine of a set of unknown samples (external validation). The equation for total protein was able to predict with an accuracy similar to that of the reference method showing a correlation (r2) between the reference and predicted values of 0.95. In the case of L-canavanine, r2 was only 0.72 and the equation was only effective to discriminate samples into groups of low, medium and high contents.
Highlights
A combination of advantages such as speed, versatility, reliability, low cost, the non-destructive character of the technique, etc, has favoured the use of near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) in many research laboratories and industries in a variety of fields like petrochemicals, food and feed, agriculture, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, biological and medical applications, etc (Williams, 2001)
The applicability and accuracy of a NIRS calibration depend on the population used to calibrate
These influences are well known in the case of grass mixtures where the composition of samples may change from one season to another depending on the percentage of each grass (García Ciudad et al, 1999; Gislum et al, 2004)
Summary
A combination of advantages such as speed, versatility, reliability, low cost, the non-destructive character of the technique, etc, has favoured the use of near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) in many research laboratories and industries in a variety of fields like petrochemicals, food and feed, agriculture, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, biological and medical applications, etc (Williams, 2001). One-flowered vetch (Vicia articulata Hornem.) has been grown in a large scale in several Mediterranean countries for animal feeding and as green manure It has been the most important feed legume in Spain but in recent years its area has been reduced up to the nearly disappearance. Main reasons of this situation are the marginalization of the crop from the agricultural subsidies and its scarce domestication, which results in an absence of commercial varieties of one-flowered vetch in Spain Despite of this neglect, one-flowered vetch is very suitable to the regions of south Europe because of its frost and drought tolerance, good adaptation to infertile soils, and adequate growth against prostrate weeds (López Bellido, 1994; Franco Jubete, 1996). The potential of this species and of other underutilized crops as feed has attracted the attention of researchers to enhance some characteristics of these plants like harvestability, seed production, improved quality and reduced toxicity, etc (Francis et al, 1999; Janick, 1999)
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