Palm kernel cake (PKC), a by-product of the palm oil industry is limited in its use as a feed ingredient for poultry due to its high fibre and lignin content. The presence of these antinutritive components is the result of shells contaminating the by-product. The nutritive value of PKC has to be improved in order to increase its inclusion rate in poultry diet. In this study, PKC was subjected to a separation method using static cling and electrostatic separation to removethe shells present in PKC. Response surface methodology based on Box-Behnken design was used to optimize the separation method with moisture content (8 to 18%), particle size distribution (0.5 to 2.5 mm) and feed rate (20 to 200 g/min) as the independent variables evaluated. According to the regression coefficients and significance of the quadratic polynomial model, the optimum separation parameters were as follows: 13% PKC moisture content;
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the influence of a synbiotics between Lactobacillus plantarum and mannan-oligosaccharides (MOS) extract and probiotics (Lactobacillus plantarum) on growth performance in red hybrid tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus x Oreochromis.niloticus). The fishes with initial average weight 11.9 ± 0.7g were randomly assigned to three dietary treatments which were fed on a diet containing probiotics only and a diet combination of probiotics and prebiotic (synbiotics), with four replicates for each treatment. The control group was fed without supplementation of any probiotics or prebiotics for the same duration. All the diets were isocaloric and isonitrogenous. All fish were fed daily at 3% of the body weight per day in two equal instalments. The feeding rate was kept at 4% body weight day-1 for the whole rearing period of 30 days, and the amount of feed was adjusted every tenth day following a bulk weighing of each group of fish. All diets contained about 32% of crude protein. Significantly (P < 0.05) high growth performance (percent gain body weight, weight gain and feed intake) were observed in the group fed diet containing synbiotics as compared to probiotics and control group. Similarly, significantly (P < 0.05) low FCR was recorded in synbiotics as compared to probiotics and control group. This result revealed that a feeding regime with synbiotics for 30 days led to a significant increase in growth performance, survival rate and feeding efficiency in red hybrid tilapia fingerlings.