Characterisation of pressed oil palm frond (OPF) as ruminant feed

industrial production of palm oil in Malaysia is booming every year and produces a wide range of agricultural by products and oil palm fronds (OPF) are the one. High production of oil palm fronds encourage farmers took the
initiative to use as roughage source and as a component in complete rations for ruminant livestock. The primary objective of this study was to determine the nutritional and lignocellulose contents of the pressed whole and petiole of OPF. ln this study, two fractions of OPF; whole OPF and petiole OPF were investigated. OPF were taken from Agropark UMK Jeli from three different trees and OPF were pressed by physical pre-treatment using sugarcane machine. The proximate analysis was conducted to determine the nutritional content of ‘crude protein (CP), crude fiber (CF), ether extract (EE),' gross energy (GE), dry matter (DM), nitrogen free extract (NFE), moisture% and ash%. Furthermore, analysis of acid detergent fiber (ADF), neutral detergent fiber (NDF) and acid detergent lignin (ADL) were also carried out to obtain the hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin content. Data from proximate analysis, analysis of ADF, NDF and ADL were analysed using Student's t—test. The proximate analysis showed that the whole OPF contained 3919 cal/g GE, DM 36.86±7.14%, 65.55±5.57% moisture, 4.71 ±0.39% CP, CF 41.99% ± 7:06, 1:46 ± 0.27% EE, 18.4 ± 1.44% ash and 47.84 ± 5.33% NFE. While the petiole OPF contained 3131 cal / g GE, 39.01 ± 6.17% DM, 60.99 ± 6.17% moisture, 1.24 ± 0.42% CP, CF 36.57 ± 4.19%, ± 0.17% 00:58 EE, 2.29 ±0.34% ash and 59.33 ± 4.28% NFE. Comparison of nutritional contents between the pressed whole and petiole indicates that the pressed whole has a higher nutrient content than the pressed petiole. The comparison ofnutritional content between the pressed whole with pressed petiole was discussed. It is recommended to continue this preliminary study by further physical, biological and chemical pre-treatment for a more detailed characterisation.