Resumen de Availability of certain nutrients in cereals reconstituted with or without enzymes for chickens
BACKGROUND: The presence of various anti-nutritional factors, poor digestibility of the protein and carbohydrates greatly affect the utilisation of cereal grains in birds. Therefore, in the present investigation, efforts were made to augment the availability of certain nutrients of cereal grains through reconstitution with or without added enzymes. RESULTS: Reconstitution of grains with enzymes increased the apparent metabolisable energy-nitrogen corrected (AMEn) values of pearl millet, sorghum, maize and wheat by 10.81, 7.39, 1.74 and 5.11% over untreated grains, while the corresponding increase for the grains reconstituted without enzymes was 8.28, 5.45, 1.95 and 0.06%, respectively. The reconstitution of cereal grains without added enzymes improved the in vitro pepsin pancreatin digestibility (IVPPD) of pearl millet, sorghum, maize and wheat by 19, 23, 20 and 11% over their respective untreated counterparts. Reconstitution with or without enzymes reduced the available carbohydrates and acid detergent fibre contents. The phytate contents were decreased significantly (P < 0.01) due to reconstitution with or without enzymes up to 48-60% for all the grains. CONCLUSION: It may be inferred that the reconstitution of the grains caused significant reduction in anti-nutritional factors of the grains, which was accompanied by significant improvement in nutrient availability. Reconstitution was found to be less expensive method of feed processing and can easily be adopted under field conditions. Addition of enzymes in the process of reconstitution provided additional advantage in nutrient availability for all the cereals except maize, and the improvement was much higher in wheat. Copyright © 2008 Society of Chemical Industry
