Adjustment of equations to predict the metabolizable energy of corn for meat type quails

Resumo

The metabolizable energy (ME) determination for foods used in quail diets, through metabolism assays, takes time, infrastructure and financial resources, which makes the development of prediction equations based on proximal composition of foods to estimate the ME values of particular interest. The objective of this study was to adjust the prediction equations of metabolizable energy (ME) of corn for quail. The chemical compositions of 12 maize varieties were determined and a metabolism assay was carried out in order to determine the apparent metabolizable energy (AME) and nitrogen-corrected apparent metabolizable energy (AMEn) of these corn varieties. The values of chemical composition, AME and AMEn, converted to dry matter, were used to adjust the prediction equations. The initial adjustment of simple and multiple linear regression of the AME and AMEn was performed using the values of crude protein (CP), ether extract (EE), neutral (NDF) and acid (ADF) detergent fiber, mineral matter (MM), calcium (Ca) and phosphorus (P) as regressors (full model). To adjust the prediction equations the statistical procedure of simple and multiple linear regression was used, with the technique of indirect elimination (Backward). There was adjustment of 10 prediction equations, in which five were for AME and another five for AMEn, the R² values of which ranged from 0.20 to 0.75 and from 0.21 to 0.78, respectively. For all adjusted equations, negative correlations for MM were observed, which may be related to its dilutive effect of the gross energy contained in corn. In conclusion, the equations that showed better adjustment were AME= 5605.46 - 385.074CP + 111.648EE + 48.1133NDF + 303.924ADF - 929.931MM (R²= 0.75) and AMEn= 5878.16 - 403.937CP + 81.9618EE + 41.8954NDF + 303.506FDA - 901.621MM (R²= 0.78).