Comparative Evaluation of Different Pretreatment Methods on Chemical Composition and In vitro Digestibility of Urea Treated Rice Straw

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate effect of chopping and soaking pretreatment on
urea 6 % treated rice straw on nutritive value and in vitro digestibility. The treatments were
arranged as 2×2 Factorial in CRD. The first factor was chopping of rice straw (long form and
chopped 10 cm) and the second factor was the soaking (soaking and no soaking). The
chemical composition and in vitro gas production were determined. The results were
shown that dry matter, crude protein, crude fat, crude fiber, cellulose, nitrogen free
extract, ADF, NDF and ADL contents were not affected by treatments. Moreover,
hemicellulose content of chopped rice straw was lower than long form of rice straw
(P<0.05). Gas production at various time, metabolizable energy, organic matter digestibility
and short chain fatty acid showed no significant differences (P>0.05). According to the
results of this research, it is pretreatment urea 6 % treated rice straw with chopping rice
straw into 10 cm could decrease cell wall content. But chopping and soaking did not
improve organic matter digestibility and metabolizable energy.