Page 97 - Agroforestry system - book inner (final corrected) - 9.-3-21_Neat

National level e-symposium on “Agroforestry system for augmenting livestock
productivity and empowering resource poor rural farmers”

for the efficient utilization. Efforts were made in the past to improve the digestibility and protein through
chemical treatment. In this connection, the urea is a cheaper, easily available and assumed to be equivalent
to anhydrous or aqueous ammonia for upgrading cereal straws in the warmer regions of the world. Hence the
present experiment was carried out on urea enrichment of paddy straw to improve the quality for sustainable
production in dairy cattle.
Materials and methods

Four kg of urea dissolved in 65 litres of water and sprinkled over 100 kg of paddy straw ensuring that
all the paddy straw is wet. Repeated the spreading and sprinkling for 100 kg of paddy straw and heap it and
covered with polythene sheet. Before and after 21 days of the urea treated paddy straw was collected and
screened for their proximate composition and fibre fractionation.
Results and discussion

The protein content was significantly (p<0.01) increased by 51.37 % and the crude fibre content was
significantly (p<0.01) decreased by 7.56 % in urea treated paddy straw than untreated paddy straw. The crude
fibre and NFE were significantly (p<0.01) decreased in urea treated paddy straw than untreated straw. On fibre
fractionation, the NDF, ADF and cellulose content of urea treated paddy straw was significantly decreased by
5.47 %, 3.93 % and 5.81 % respectively than untreated paddy straw. Similar to the present study, Mesfin and
Ktaw (2010) observed that the urea treated wheat straw, increased the crude protein and decreased the NDF
content than untreated straw.

Table 1.Nutrient composition of paddy straw before and after urea enrichment (Mean ± S.E)
Urea untreated Paddy Urea treated paddy
S.No. Nutrient composition
Straw straw
Proximate composition
1 Dry matter 92.60 ± 0.43 b 89.73 ± 0.26 a
2 Crude protein 3.20 ± 0.04 b 6.58 ± 0.09 a
3 Ether extract NS 0.92 ± 0.05 0.90 ± 0.07
4 Crude fibre 34.65 ± 0.43 b 32.03 ± 0.23 a
5 Total ash NS 16.23 ± 0.33 16.43 ± 0.39
6 Nitrogen free extract 37.60 ± 0.47 b 33.81 ± 0.45 a
Fibre fractions
1 Neutral detergent fibre (NDF) 69.96 ± 0.54 b 66.13 ± 0.90 a
2 Acid detergent fibre (ADF) 42.53 ± 0.37 b 40.86 ± 0.31 a
3 Hemicellulose NS 27.44 ± 0.82 25.26 ± 1.17
4 Cellulose* 37.35 ± 0.39 b 35.18 ± 0.31 a
5 Lignin* 4.58 ± 0.18 a 5.46 ± 0.11 b

Mean of Four observations; NS Non Significance, Means bearing different superscript in the same row differed significantly (p<0.01),
(p<0.05)*

78 Institute of Animal Nutrition, Centre for Animal Production Studies, TANUVAS
National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development