Abul Hasnat, Asim K. Pal, Narottam P. Sahu, Tejpal C. S. and Sanjiv Ganesh
The effect of electron beam (EB) radiation on the anti-nutritional factors (ANFs) of unconventional plant based feed ingredients such as cotton seed cake; rubber seed cake and soybean meal were studied. All the three ingredients were exposed to 0 (control), 5, 10, 15 or 50 KGy of electron beam. The anti-nutritional factors examined were phytic acid, tannin and hydrocyanic acid. The results revealed that EB irradiation significantly reduced (P<0.05) the phytic acid, tannin and hydrocyanic acid content in all the three ingredients. The degradation of ANFs varied with respect to dose of electron beam radiation and the feed ingredients as well. Using broken line analysis it was found that a radiation of 9.33 KGy was found to be optimum to reduce hydrocyanic acid, phytic acid and tannic acid to the extent of 34, 63, and 22%, respectively. This irradiation method appears to be user friendly compared to traditional methods for reducing the ANFs present in the plant ingredients
