(22) Giant Taro (Alocasia macrorrhiza) leaves as partial replacement for soya bean meal in sugar cane juice diets for growing pigs

Lylian Rodríguez, Deibys J Lopez*, T R Preston and K Peters**

UTA-TOSOLY, Socorro, Santander-Sur, Colombia
lylianr@utafoundation.org;
* FUSM, Barranquilla- Colombia
 lopezdeibys2@yahoo.com
Humboldt University, Berlin
k.peters@agrar.hu-berlin.de

Abstract

Twelve pigs in 4 pens (3 animals in each) were used to compare two treatments in a completely random design with 2 repetitions. The treatments were soybean meal at 500 g/animal/day (control) and fresh leaves of Giant Taro (4 kg/animal/day and 250 g/animal/day of soybean meal). The rest of the diet was  sugar cane  juice and a mineral supplement. The trial lasted 56 days during the growth phase from 25 to 56 kg live weight.

There were no differences between treatments for the parameters: DM intake, weight gain and feed conversion, the values of which were within the range normally observed for this type of diet.

The results are preliminary but they indicate the potential of fresh Taro leaves to replace up to half the soybean protein in diets based on sugar cane juice for growing pigs.

Key words:  Growth,  local resources, pigs, protein, soybean, sugar cane juice, Taro