Effectiveness of Lathyrus sativus L. grain as animal Feed

Abstract

Lathyrus (Lathyrussativus L.) is an important legume crop with low cost and easy cultivation grown in India, Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, Nepal, and Pakistan for human food and animal feed. Inherently Lathyrus possesses resistance to drought, excess moisture, salinity, diseases, and insect pests. As Lathyrus has an ambivalent reputation due to ODAP content in its plant parts, efforts are on to develop low or ODAP free Lathyrus varieties with high biomass for dual purpose for human food and animal feed. Older published animal feeding studies are of limited use, since the presence and role of ODAP was unknown until the 1960s. More recent feeding studies indicate that low ODAP lines of L. sativus can be safely incorporated at inclusion rates up to 40, 30 and 70% of the diet of poultry, pigs and sheep, respectively, without growth reductions (Hanbury, et al, 2000). Lathyrus is known as excellent feed and fodder crop for centuries as a main concentrate for horses (Anonymous, 1894). Livestock is a key component of farming systems in South Asia and in Africa, and most particularly with small and marginal farmers, estimated about 678 million, and indicates importance of livestock to their livelihoods (ILRI, 2000). Lathyrus is increasingly recognized as an important feed and fodder crop by the resource poor farmers of semi-arid and dry areas. Acceptability of low ODAP varieties by the farmers of non-traditional Lathyrus growing areas and high nutritional composition makes the Lathyrus a perfect dual purpose for crop securing food, feed and fodder security in the region. (Sarkar, et al., 2010). As world demand for legume feed protein is likely to increase, due to increasing demand for animal food products, L. sativus are crops that should be considered in regions with suitable environments (Hanbury, et al, 2016).