NIRS Forage and Feed Testing Consortium (NIRSC), Feed Analysis Consortium (FeedAC), and National Forage Testing Association (NFTA) Joint Conference Agenda

February 13th & 14th, 2008
University Place Conference Center & Hotel,
Indianapolis, Indiana

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

NRC and CPM Models, Use of Current Model (Mike Van Amburgh, Cornell University)

Inputting Laboratory Values into CPM (Tim Snyder, Renaissance Nutrition)

NDF Digestibility. From the Lab to the Cow: Accessing the current status of in vitro analysis and its relation to cow performance (Fred Owens, Pioneer Hi-Bred)

A Comparison of Methods for Feed Fat analysis (Tom Jenkins, Clemson University)

Application of NIR for Commercial Forage Analysis (Michael Porter, Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, Hillsborough Research Station, Northern Ireland) via teleconference

Panel Discussion: Van Amburgh, Snyder, Owens, Sapienza

Nitrogen Update: recommendations for changes and reasons for changes (Mike Van Amburgh, Cornell University)

Biomass and NIR Models (Ed Wolfrum, National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

Lignin and lignin analysis (Ron Hatfield, USDA - FRC

AAFCO Introduction (Victoria Siegel, Purdue University)

Joint Discussions Between NIRSC, Feed AC & NFTA: what are our strengths and potential joint efforts, what are our commonalities? (David Johnson, Spence Driver, Bob Bishop, Dan Undersander, Don Meyer, Chuck Schwab)

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

Starch and Sugar Analysis (Mary Beth Hall, USDA - FRC)

Starch Availability: availability in rumen and intestine, characterizing the value of corn (Pat Hoffman, University of Wisconsin)

In vitro and in situ analysis, a Commercial Laboratory Perspecitve (Donald Sapienza, Sapienza Analytica)

Sample Evaluation using NIRS: how to determine sample differences/variation/range/homogeneity test, how NFTA prepares their bulk test samples (Paolo Berzaghi and/or Dan Undersander)

NIRS Customers: why accuracy and precision is important, hay dealer (Nick Huntsman) & seed researcher (Chuck Kahl)

NIRS Instrumentation Company Reports:

1. FOSS (Jeff Boedigheimer)
2. Unity (Paul Martin)
3. Perten (Terry Allen)
4. Bruker (Hui Li)

Technical Questions and Answers (Paolo Berzaghi)

NIRSC Committee Reports:

1. IP: NIRSC Equations – policy on expanding NIRSC equations, protecting intellectual property, NIRSC equations on more than one platform (Paolo Berzaghi)

2. Quality (Doug Harland)

3. Calibrations: starch, sugars (Chuck Kahl)

4. Plant Breeders (David Johnson)

5. Membership (Paul Vendrell)

6. White Paper (Neal Martin)

7. Finance (Dave Whalen)

NIRSC Planning Session: assign committees, projects for 2008