Two experiments were undertaken at the Department of Animal Science at UFSM in arder to study in vitro digestibility technique modifications to assess low quality forages. Experiment I consisted of organic matter (OM) in vivo digestibility coefficients estimation, involving 10 tropical grass hay and two grain harvest straws. On Experiment II, one determined the in vitro digestibility coefficients through the TILLEY and TERRY technique (1963), MJ treatment - 48 hours of incubation with ruminal liquor (microbian fermentation) + 48 hours of pepsin incubation (enzymatic fermentation) and one studied the modifications over this technique named as M2 - incubation period delay (from 48h to 96h), with ruminal liquor renewal after 48h of incubation (new ruminal liquor addition over the solidphase of the samples, after centrifugation and liquid phase disregard); M3 - 96h of incubation with ruminal liquor with reinoculation after 48h of incubation (new liquor addition over the samples, without the centrifugation and liquid phase withdrawai); M4 - 96h of incubation with diluted ruminal liquor, with liquor renewal; M5 - 96h of incubation with diluted ruminal liquor with reinoculation; M6 - 96h of incubation with ruminal liquor, liquor renewal and pepsin incubation period delay (from 48 h to 72h) and M7 - 96h of incubation with ruminal liquor, reinoculation, digestion with 72h pepsin. A correlation analysis was undertaken between in vivo digestibility coefficient means and in vitro digestibility from the modifications to overall forages and a regression analysis over the treatment that presented high and significant correlations. From the results that were determined one could find that TILLEY and TERRY (1963) in vitro method does not present good precision to estimate low nutritional value forage digestibility and that among the tested modifications that one with 96h of fermentation with ruminal liquor (LR), with LR reinoculation after 48h of incubation + 48h with pepsin (M3) was the one that demonstrated to have the best efficiency to estimate the digestibility.
digestibility; low quality forage
