The major antinutritive factor in Leucaena for ruminants is condensed tannin (CT). CT bind proteins, incurring a negative effect on protein utilisation. The two major factors affecting the ability of CT to bind protein have been purported to be CT size and the pH of the reaction environment. To test these hypotheses the protein precipitating capacities of CT extracted from four promising Leucaena genotypes, L. leucocephala (K636), L. pallida (CQ3439), L. trichandra (CPI46568), and L. collinsii (OFI52/88) were assessed. L. leucocephala had approximately half the ability to precipitate protein on a g/g basis than L. pallida or L. trichandra while L. collinsii gave no measurable ability to precipitate protein (reaction environment=pH 5.0). Increasing or decreasing the pH of the reaction solution away from pH 5.0 (the isoelectric point of the protein) reduced the ability of CT from all the species to precipitate protein; the decrease being higher a pH 2.5 than at pH 7.5. At pH 2.5 L. leucocephala CT completely lost its capacity to precipitate protein. The relatively poor ability of L. leucocephala CT to bind protein at pHs approximating those at the abomasum suggests L. leucocephala may have the greatest potential of the four Leucaenas tested for increasing the extent of feed protein escaping ruminant degradation for later release and digestion in the small intestine, hence increasing the total amount of protein absorbed by ruminants. CT fractions from each Leucaena were also separated into individual CTs, by size-exclusion chromatography and examined for protein precipitating capacity. In general it was found that the larger sized CT of the accessions L. pallida and L. trichandra could precipitate more protein than the smaller sized CT. This pattern was not found for L. leucocephala.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/253670 |
| Creators | Osborne, Nicholas John |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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