Professor of Andalas University (Unand) Padang Prof. Nuraini said mud and palm oil cake could be alternative feeds for poultry and based on research conducted they had quite good nutritional and protein content.
"Agricultural waste such as mud and palm oil cake can be used as alternative feed for poultry amid the high quality of high-nutrient feed ingredients," he said in Padang, Thursday.
He conveyed this in the inaugural scientific oration as permanent professor in the field of Feed Technology at the Faculty of Animal Husbandry Unand with the title Optimization of Feed Nutrition From Agro-Industrial Waste with Lignocellulolytic and Hypocholesternomic Functions for Poultry.
According to him, cheap feed is needed because conventional feed is still imported, such as corn and soybean meal, and its use is still competing with human needs.
Some alternative feeds that can be used are mud and palm oil cake and can be obtained at a lower price, he said.
He said Indonesia is the largest palm oil producer in the world with a total production of 22.5 million tonnes per year.
Based on data compiled in 2015, the area of oil palm plantations in Indonesia reached 11.2 million hectares and in 2016 it increased to 11.9 million hectares.
The growing development of oil palm plantations will certainly produce high waste reaching 45 percent to 46 percent of the processing of the produced palm heads, he said.
According to him, every one ton of palm oil production produces around 2 to 3 tons of mud and palm oil cake.
Palm mud has a nutritional content of 11.30 percent crude protein, 25.67 percent crude fiber, 22.15 percent lignin, 22.45 percent cellulose and 1,549 kilo calorie per kilogram of metabolic energy.
He found that so far the palm sludge produced by the palm oil processing industry has not been used economically.
Meanwhile, palm oil cake contains 16.60 percent crude protein and 6.45 percent fat, so it can also be used as animal feed, he said.
To get around the problem of high crude fiber and low crude protein, fermentation can be carried out using lignocellulotic molds.
