Fusion of THz-TDS and NIRS Based Detection of Moisture Content for Cattle Feed

As an essential index to evaluate feed quality, feed moisture content which is too high or too low will impose an adverse impact on feed nutritional value. Therefore, the quantitative analysis of feed moisture content is significant. In this paper, the detection of feed moisture content based on terahertz (THz) and near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy and data fusion technology of THz and NIR (THz-NIR) was investigated. First, feed samples with different water content (29.46%-49.46%) were prepared, and THz (50-3000 mu m) and NIR (900-1700 nm) spectral data of samples was collected and preprocessed, and the feed samples were divided into correction set and verification set by 2:1. Second, the spectral data was fused through the head-to-tail splicing, and the feed moisture content prediction model was established combined with partial least squares regression (PLSR). Third, competitive adaptive reweighting sampling (CARS) was applied to extract spectral characteristic variables for feature layer fusion, and the feed moisture content prediction model in feature level was constructed combined with PLSR. Finally, the evaluation parameters validation set correlation coefficient (Rp), the root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP), and the residual predictive deviation (RPD) were employed to evaluate the prediction effect of the model. The results indicated that THz, NIR spectra, and data fusion technology could quickly and effectively predict feed moisture content. Among them, the characteristic layer spectral data fusion model achieved the optimal prediction effect while Rp, RMSEP, and RPD reached 0.9933, 0.0069, and 8.7386 respectively. In conclusion, compared with the prediction model established by single THz and NIR spectrum, THz-NIR spectrum data fusion could more accurately predict feed moisture content and provide certain theoretical and technical support for inspirations and methods for quantitative analysis of feed moisture content of livestock and poultry.