S.A. Abdalla1, N. Abdullah1, Y.W. Ho1, J.B. Liang1 and A.B. Shamsudln3
1Institute of Bioscience, 2Department of Animal Science, University Putra
Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
3Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI), P.O. Box 12301, 50774 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
SUMMARY
An experiment was conducted to study the chemical characteristics of silages produced from oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) fronds (OPF) and nipah (Nypa fruticans) fronds (NF). Fresh fronds were chopped mechanically and packed separately in tightly closed containers, and left in the shed for various time intervals. Chemical analyses showed that fresh OPF had significantly (P<0.05) higher dry matter (DM) and neutral detergent fiber (NDF), but significantly (P<0.05) lower ash, lignin, soluble sugars and buffering capacity than that of NF. The crude
protein (CP) content 0 ffresh fronds were similar, in the range of 4.7-5.3 %. However, after ensiling for 90 days, the CP content of OPF silage was significantly (P<0.05) higher (6.8 %) than that of NF silage (%4.0). On day 30 and 90, OPF silage showed lower pH (4.1 and 4.3, respectively) than NF silage (4.8 and 4.6, respectively). At both incubation periods, the
lactic acid contents of OPF silage (53.6 and 52.8 g/kg DM, respectively) were significantly (P<0.05) higher than that of NF silage (16.8 and 17.8 g/kg, respectively). The buffering capacity of OPF silage was greatly increased from 57.7 m-eqU/I00g DM at day 0 to93.3 m-equ/100g DM at day 90, whereas, the buffering capacity for NF silage decreased from 75.0 m-equ/100g DM at day 0 to 51.7 m-equ/l00g DM at day 90.
It was concluded that OPF produced a better quality silage than NF, and that the high ash and lignin contents as well as the buffering capacity of NF may cause the poor quality of the silage produced from NF.
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