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Making the most of mango waste to manifold milk production

By Munawar Hasan
July 20, 2018

LAHORE: Mango waste, owing to its extraordinarily high nutritional value, can prove to be a super-fodder for the dairy cattle to manifold the milk production if it is collected and processed using innovative techniques, livestock department officials said on Thursday.

“Punjab Livestock and Dairy Development Board (PLDDB) is on the forefront of an initiative to convert mango waste into animal feed,” Dr Masood Parvez, a consultant working with PLDDB, told The News.

“Dairy animals were not sufficiently fed mainly due to shortage of fodder.” Parvez observed that the balanced feed was another area where our country lacked badly. “Utilisation of crop and fruit waste as valuable feed resources is an area mostly overshadowed in dairy sector due to multiple reasons,” he said.

He said mango seed meal and allied products assume significance in diversifying sources of cattle feed and it was available in abundance throughout the country. Mango waste could not be collected from domestic trash as it involved a cumbersome process, instead, he added, the mango process units could be the main source of it for manufacturing animal feed.

He informed that total mango used in pulp production stood at 320,000 tons in Punjab province alone and almost 50 percent of it was pulp and 50 percent peel and stone. Parvez said mango waste comprised peel and stone and had highly nutritious and palatable ingredients for dairy animals including cows and buffaloes.

“The available quantity of this waste is more than 155,000 metric tons in Punjab province alone,” he said adding that the source of this waste were 14 mango juice and pulp factories. As per nutritional profile of the mango waste, if process as whole (peel, core, and seed), it contains 12 percent fat, 8 percent CP having 3000 kcal with 1.8 percent ash and 8 percent fiber.

Without core and peel, it contains 18 percent fat, 9 percent protein, 1.8 percent fiber and 1 percent ASH having 3600kcal. The stone can be crushed for making a highly nutritious butter meal.

The PLDDP official said the process included sun drying or mechanical drying

up to 12 percent moisture of mango waste, followed by de-hulling, which included separation of seed from core and finally the whole waste was ground into a powdery form.

“We are planning to install solar dryer next year for carrying out this process on large scale as mango pulp waste is a low cost (around Rs 12/kg) option for manufacturing mango animal feed.

Dr Wasi Muhammad Khan, a senior manager at PLDDB, said there was a severe shortage of fodder in the country. “In order to make up for this shortage, there is a need to explore alternative ways of feeding animals with healthy and nutritional feed,” Khan said.

He added that against a demand of 200 million tons of fodder in Punjab province, only 51 million tons were produced every year, resulting in a huge shortfall. “In order to meet this challenge, the PLDDB is working on silage making, manufacturing maize cob meal, hay production, and crop and fruit leftovers as part of Nutrition Resource Management (NRM),” he added.

“… we use maize cob, which is a byproduct of the highest yielding cereal crop worldwide. It is a significant crop of Pakistan and is ranked as the third important cereal crop in the world,” he said.

Khan said the cobs have a high nutritional value being a byproduct of a food grain. “Currently, we are destroying the dynamic natural resource of maize cob as it is mostly being used in the brick kilns leading to environmental pollution,” the PLDDP senior manager said.

He added that about 6 million tons of cobs were available in Pakistan for the production of its meal which was sustainable and cost-effective feeding resource.