Effects of treating Prosopis juliflora pods with multi-enzyme, with and without bacterial cultures on in-vitro dry matter digestibility (IVDMD), fermentation kinetics and performance of growing pigs

Abstract

Ground Prosopis pod meal (GPPM) is excellent affordable and locally available feed material for pigs. However, digestibility of GPPM by growing pigs is usually limited by the high level of fibre content. Use of pre- treatment methods can potentially improve the digestibility and the utilization of the pods  The objective of this study was to determine the effects of enzyme supplementation and fermentation on in-vitro dry matter digestibility (IVDMD) and fermentation kinetics of GPPM for pig feeding.  There were four treatment groups; T₁ Ground Prosopis Pods Meal (GPPM) treated with multi-enzyme (Natuzyme®); T₂ Untreated (GPPM); T₃ GPPM fermented with (Lactobacillus plantarum MTD1 Ecosyl®) inoculum and T₄ GPPM treated using natural fermentation. An IVDMD trial was conducted using pepsin-pancreatin hydrolysis method. The pepsin-pancreatin hydrolysed materials were mixed with faeces from barrows for in-vitro gas measurement. Fermentation kinetics parameters were computed from cumulative gas collected from in-vitro gas production. IVDMD and fermentation kinetics were analysed using the mixed model procedures in SPSS Statistics version 22. Results indicated that pretreatment fibre degrading enzyme in this study led to an improvement in the in-vitro digestibility of dry matter of the GPPM by 3.68% compared to the control and by 2.51% and 7.21% respectively compared to Lactobacillus plantarum inoculated and naturally fermented GPPM. Cumulative gas produced from multi-enzyme pre-treated GPPM (18.502ml) was significantly higher (p<0.05) than naturally fermented GPPM (13.429ml).There was significant differences in the rate of degradation (Rmax) ml/hr when untreated (0.677) and multi-enzyme treated GPPM (0.786) compared to L. plantarum (0.493) and natural fermented GPPM (0.425). In conclusion, pre-treatment of prosopis pod meal with multi-enzyme treatment compared to the Untreated (GPPM) improved the in-vitro dry matter digestibility. The multi-enzyme treatment also resulted to a better fermentation kinetics compared to the other pre-treatment methods. The result results implies that use multi-enzyme treated GPPM can potential improve the utilization of prosopis pod meal in growing pigs