Emerging and New Generation By-Products

Oil palm by-products are good examples of NCFR which are becoming increasingly important new feeds. This is associated with the rapidly expanding land area under the crop in countries like India. It has been estimated that on an average 0.62, 0.96 and 0.23 mt / ha / yr of oil palm fronds, palm kernel cake and palm press fiber, respectively are available from oil palm cultivation as a plantation crop.

Indian south coastal region has been recently identified to be a potential belt for oil palm cultivation. In Andhra Pradesh state alone 0.4 m ha of land is likely to be covered with this new commercial oil crop in the long run. Palm kernel cake (PKC) is one of the three major byproducts available from solvent extraction of palm fruits. Proximate analysis of solvent extracted PKC revealed 14.8 % CP, 1.28 % EE, 33.2 % CF, 41.72 % NFE and 9 % Total ash on DM basis. PKC is a rich source of copper as evident from its concentration of 55 ppm. The gross energy value of solvent extracted meal is 4.43 kcal/g DM due to its low oil content and high fibrous nature.

Palm kernel cake (PKC) has been proved to be a viable substitute to replace groundnut cake up to 15 % level in complete rations of ruminants after oil extraction followed by grinding. The processed new feed resource has also proved to be a strategic supplement on forage based rations and is getting popularized with the feed industry. Studies carried out at ANGRAU, Hyderabad have helped in identifying palm kernel cake having an effective protein degradability of 48% for inclusion in the rations of the ruminants up to 15%. It was further revealed that formaldehyde treatment at 3.4g/ 100g protein from different oil seed meals for effective rumen bypass to serve as an alternative natural bypass protein in ruminant rations.

Encouraging results have been reported to include palm press fiber (PPF), another by-product of oil palm industry with urea-ammoniation enrichment (4% urea, 40% moisture with 20 d incubation) to replace paddy straw in buffalo rations. In a similar manner efforts should be made to identify new feed resources and to develop viable processing techniques to integrate the same under traditional feeding systems after thorough on-farm evaluation studies. It is further emphasized that many of non- conventional feed resources, especially the oil cakes like jatropa are to be tapped and added to the overall livestock feed basket. Greater thrust need to be given for propagation of Jatropa seeds as alternate fuel source, 25-30 million tonnes of jatropa cake would be available by the year 2015