Effect of enzyme addition on the nutritive value of six lupin cultivars with different alkaloid content

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to study the effect on chick performance of crude enzyme preparations when added to diets containing six different cultivars of lupin (Lupinus albus L.) seed grown in Canada. The lupin cultivars studied were Pnognus, NL, LAD, Hutterite, Amiga and Brandon. The total alkaloid content of these cultivars was 0.01, 0.02, 0.01, 0.04, 0.01 and 1.42%, respectively. The weight gain and feed consumption of the birds fed the high alkaloid content were reduced significantly (P < 0.0001; up to 43 and 31%, respectively) and the feed to gain ratio increased significantly (P < 0.0001; up to 21%) in comparison to the other cultivars. The addition of enzymes (0.1% each of Energex, Bio-Feed-Pro and Novozyme) increased significantly weight gain (P < 0.0033) and feed consumption (P<0.0116) by 5 and 1%, respectively, and reduced (P < 0.0055) feed to gain ratio by 4%. This was only seen in the low alkaloid cultivars. These results suggest that the enzyme addition improve the nutritional value of lupin cultivars with low content of alkaloid and that lupin alkaloids depress chick performance.