13 The nutritive value of 20 forage plants commonly used for feeding pigs in the Democratic 14 Republic of the Congo was studied to determine chemical composition, protein amino acid 15 profiles, mineral content, and in vitro digestibility using a two-steps method combining an 16 enzymatic pepsin and pancreatin hydrolysis followed by a 72h gas-test fermentation. The 17 highest protein contents ...

The objective of this work was to study nutritional strategies for decreasing methane production by ruminants fed tropical diets, combining in vitro and in vivo methods. The in vitro approach was used to evaluate the dose effect of condensed tannins (CT) contained in leaves of Gliricidia sepium, Leucaena leucocephala, and Manihot esculenta (39, 75, and 92 g CT/kg DM, respectively) on methane pr...

The intensification of beef cattle production in dryland areas of East Indonesia has the potential to substantially raise the incomes of smallholder farmers that dominate the sector. In this study we assess the potential for intensifying beef production on Sumbawa Island, by introducing a household feedlot production system (2-20 animals) based on the Leucaena leucocephala (leucanea) tree legum...

The tree legume leucaena (Leucaena leucocephala) is rich in protein content, but it also contains the toxin mimosine. A set of genes involved in mimosine degradation has been identified from Rhizobium TAL1145. TAL1145 degrades mimosine in two steps: the mid genes encode enzymes that break down mimosine to 3-hydroxy-4-pyridone (HP); HP is further degraded by a dioxygenase and a hydrolase, encode...

In the present study, a 0.47 kb OMT gene construct from aspen, encoding for an enzyme O-methyltransferase (OMT, EC 2.1.1.6), in antisense orientation was used to down-regulate lignin biosynthesis in Leucaena leucocephala. The plants were transformed with Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain harboring the antisense gene, and the transformation was confirmed by PCR amplification of the npt II gene. T...