Enhancing the utilization of oil palm fronds as livestock feed using biological pre-treatment method

Despite its advancement in industrial sectors, the economy of South East Asia is still largely dependent on its agricultural sector. The implication of the situation is the large amount of agricultural by-product produced. The agricultural by-products saw limited utilization and are usually disposed via several methods. Indeed, the limited utilization especially as animal feed is due to the presence of lignin which limits its effectiveness. Several methods have been explored to manipulate the lignin content of the by-products. The most cost-effective way of manipulating the lignin content is via biological pretreatment using white rot fungi. In this experiment, one of the abundant agricultural by-products in Malaysia, oil palm fronds (OPF), was used to be pretreated with fungi to enhance its nutritional value and assess its potential as animal feed. Firstly, several fungi were isolated from rotten OPF and were identified. The identified fungi are Trichoderma harzianium, Fusarium solani, Trichoderma asperellum, and Trichoderma koningiopsis. Their enzymes activity were tested and pitted against conventional biological pretreatment agent, the white rot fungi Lentinula edodes and Ganoderma lucidum. The results showed the isolated Trichoderma harzianum and Fusarium solani exhibited optimal enzyme activity profile as pretreatment agent compared to the white rot fungi in term of enhancing the utilization of the agricultural by-product as livestock feed. Indeed, effective utilization of agricultural by-product as livestock feed will reduce the feeding cost of livestock industry as it constitute a major portion of the production cost.