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Dry Matter Determination in Green Plant Material and in Silage¹

Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, Wooster, Ohio

ABSTRACT

Oven-drying has been the method of water determination generally employed in silage studies. The large losses of dry matter usually reported in such studies have often been partly unexplainable though the issue has been confused by juice and evaporation losses and sampling difficulties.

The presence of different volatile materials in silage has long been known, but has failed to gain appropriate recognition in the methods of analysis commonly employed. The present study compares the usual indirect method of water determination by oven drying with a direct method in which the water is recovered and determined volumetrically. On the usual green silage crops, results by the two methods are in good agreement; but on silage the results are often widely divergent. This is explainable on the grounds that in drying the volatile matter other than water of the silage is included with the water; while in the direct or distillation method this nonaqueous volatile matter is included with the dry matter where it seemingly belongs.

Simultaneous application of both these methods to silage analysis should give a reliable measure of the volatile products in the silage. These are doubtless affected both as to character and amount by the kind of crop and the conditions under which the silage is made, and probably have a definite relationship to the quality of the silage. Details in this line, however, are at present unknown.

General use of the drying method of water determination has resulted in overestimating the dry matter losses of silage-making and in underestimating the feeding value of silage as determined by analysis. Widespread application of a direct method, such as the one described, to silage studies may call for a review of existing figures regarding the average composition and comparative feeding value of silage.

¹ Some of this material was presented in different form before the Division of Agricultural and Food Chemistry of the American Chemical Society at Buffalo, N. Y., Sept. 10, 1942.