Nutritional Evaluation of Whole Kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus L.) Seed Meal in Rats

The study reported herein evaluates with rats the nutritional quality of raw and roasted kenaf seed as sources of nitrogen. Some safety aspects regarding possible feed use were also investigated. Wistar rats were fed four purified diets viz: a basal diet (nitrogen-free), a reference diet that contains casein and two diets made of kenaf seeds. Dietary treatments significantly influenced performance, biological indices and blood parameters (P<0.05). The performance of rats on kenaf based diets was inferior to that of rats on casein diets. The levels of serum glucose were significantly elevated for rats on kenaf based diets compared to rats on casein diet. However, the levels of serum total protein, globulin and albumin/globulin ratio were significantly elevated for rats on the casein diet compared to rats on kenaf based diets. Among the kenaf test proteins, Protein Efficiency Ratio (PER) values of 1.87 and 1.65; Net Protein Ratio (NPR) values of 0.56 and 0.50; Biological Value (BV) of 65.04 and 63.05 and Net Protein Utilization (NPU) values of 44.23 and 42.56 were obtained respectively for a raw kenaf seed meal RKM) and roasted kenaf seed meal (HKM). There was no significant difference in results obtained for both RKM and HKM.