Nutritional evaluation of cassava root meal fermented with rumen filtrate in rats.

Abstract

The study reported herein evaluates with rats the nutritional quality of cassava root meal (CRM) fermented with rumen filtrate using caged layer waste (CLW), pig excreta (PE) and a 1:1 mix of CLW and PE respectively as sources of nitrogen. Some safety aspects regarding possible feed use were also investigated. Wistar rats were fed five purified diets viz; a basal diet (nitrogen free), a reference diet that contained casein and three test diets made of the enhanced CRM. Dietary treatments significantly influenced performance, biological indices and blood parameters (P<0.05). The performances of rats on the enhanced cassava diets were inferior 10 that of rats on casein diet. The level of serum urea and thiocyanate were significantly elevated for rats on the cassava root-based diets compared to the casein diet. Among the enhanced cassava test protein, Protein Efficiency Ratio (PER) values of 0.88, 0.57 and 0.62; Net Protein Ratio (NPR) values of 0.27, -0.15 and -0.03 and Biological Value (BV) of 55.04, 39.96 and 52.27 were obtained respectively for cassava enhanced with caged layer waste (CCLW), cassava enhanced with pig excreta (CPE) and cassava with 1.1 mix of caged layer waste and pig excreta (CCLPE). The result obtained from rats on CCLW was significantly better than the other enhanced cassava products.