Production of protein-rich poultry feed ingredient from discarded spinach

Abstract

Vegetable processing industries can be utilized for the production of protein using fermentation. Besides, vegetable waste should be treated as a valuable resource rather than waste, and turning it into poultry feeds would be a viable alternative. This study focus on determining the physical and biochemical constituent of protein production from discarded green spinach powder. The specific microbial strain from Aspergillus Niger in solid state fermentation was used to investigate the protein content. The solid state fermentation was performed under two conditions which were temperature and incubation time. The One-Factor-At-a-Time (OFAT) analysis was chosen due to investigate the protein by triplicated for each parameters in every samples used. Before fermentation, the value of moisture, organic matter and mineral content of spinach after drying in an oven are 10.44%, 83.33% and 18.63% which are lowest from the value after fermentation. Next, the highest moisture content, organic content and mineral content that had been recorded after fermentation at temperature 37℃ which are 30.61%, 84.66% and 20.63%. Furthermore, the quantity of protein was recorded using Kjedhal method. From the titration, the highest protein content is about 54.40% under fermentation at 37℃ (24 hours) while the lowest yield of protein is 37.68% which at 40℃ (72 hours). From the result, the protein production by fermentation with using specific A.niger was gave good quantity of protein as determined in the objective of this study.