Protein hydrolysis of rubber seed powder by using salts treatment

In order to grow economical yet quality poultry feed, poultry requires a high-quality nutrient. For any poultry, protein is one of the essential elements in their feeding meal. Production must need a high feeding quality to produce high-quality poultry, making farmers devote themselves to purchasing the feeding meal. Hence, another solution is replacing the regular soybean meal used in the poultry feed with rubber seed powder. However, this powder is not easily digested. Therefore, this study aims to treat rubber seeds with three different types of salts, including the neutral, acidic, and alkaline salts, at different concentrations and test the protein hydrolysis level of rubber seeds content after the salt's treatment. The results of this study show that rubber seed powder can replace soybean meal as a protein source, and the highest protein decrease is 88 %, which comes from the KHCO3-treated rubber seed powder for 5 hours at 60 °C. The molecular size reduction of protein was confirmed by using the SDS-Page electrophoresis. This study demonstrates the potential of salts to denature and/or hydrolyse protein into smaller molecules to produce a highly digestible protein source.