Simulation of ruminal digestion by gas production method

Abstract

Different systems have been proposed to measure the accumulated gas production in forages and concentrates digestion kinetics studies. In this paper, the development, applications and limitations of the gas production technique (GPT), are discussed. Additionally, practical applications of the GPT are showed, including evaluation of alfalfa (Medicago sativa) silage, supplemented with rapidly fermentable energy, which illustrates the GPT potential to evaluate fermentability of forage’s soluble fractions.