Nutritional value of seed rape meal in relation to different processing conditions

Rat bioassays were conducted to study the effects of different processing methods on the nutritive value of rape seed meal. Treatments given to rape seed were irradiation alone, irradiation + autoclaving, irradiation + dry heating and sprouting. Results revealed that feeding rape seed as the sole source of dietary protein resulted in severe weight loss with control as well as all the treated samples. However, replacing half the maintenance level protein with wheat resulted in remarkable improvement in the nutritional quality of meal. There were weigh gains in all the groups. Weight gains were 32.15, 20.06, 17.36, 34.00, 19.93 and 26.27 g/rat in casein, control, sprouting, radiation, radiation + heat and radiation + autoclving groups, respectively. Protein efficiency ratios (PER) when adjusted to casein, were 2.10 for radiation + autoclaving and 2.03 for sprouting. Protein digestibility ranged from 92.68 to 96.79% among all the rape seed groups as compared to 97.77% for casein. Among organs, heart weight was influenced most by different diets (0.43 to 0.48% of body weight), while differences in weights of lungs, liver, spleen and kidney were negligible. (author)