| Abstract: | Correlations between in vitro dry matter (DM) digestibility and amount of DM dissolved in acid pepsin and cellulase enzymes for 24 tropical forage samples gave a value of 0.91 but a high sample standard deviation of 6.50 and a coefficient of variation of 25 %. This suggests that the cellulase technique requires further study if it were to be used as a predictor of rumen liquor in vitro digestibility values for tropical grasses and legumes. An improved correlation of r = 0.98 with sample standard deviation of 2.29 was obtained when percent DM dissolved in acid-pepsin and cellulase enzymes was compared with the in vivo dry matter digestibility values of 11 tropical forage grasses and legumes. This result suggests that the pepsin-cellulase technique may be used to predict in vivo DM digestibility values in tropical grasses and legumes. |
