A STUDY ON NUTRITIVE VALUE OF SAWDUST

Abstract

The present study was undertaken to observe the chemical composition of different types of sawdust available in the metropolitan areas of Chittagong, Bangladesh. Twenty different types of sawdust of difeerent plants were collected from study areas. Chemical analyses of the samples were carried out in triplicate for moisture, dry matter (DM), crude protein (CP), crude fiber (CF), nitrogen free extracts (NFE), ether extracts (EE) and total ash in the animal nutrition laboratory, Chittagong Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Chittagong, Bangladesh. Results indicated that, there were no marked variations (P0.05) in the moisture, dry matter and total ash contents of the samples. However, crude protein, crude fiber, nitrogen free extracts and ether extracts content significantly differed (P0.01) from one sample to another. Moisture content varied from 2.6 to 8.4 g/100g, dry matter content varied from 91.40 to 97.40 g/100g, crude protein content varied from 1.8 to 43.5 g/100g, crude fiber content varied from 41 to 74 g/100g, ether extract content varied from 1.0 to 3 g/100g, nitrogen free extracts content varied from 12.8 to 60.24 g/100g and total ash content varied from 0.67 to 2.6 It could therefore, be inferred that, sawdust currently available in the local market are widely variable in terms of their quality.