Detoxification of a toxic variety of Jatropha curcas using heat and chemical treatments, and preliminary nutritional evaluation with rats

Abstract

Seeds from a toxic variety of Jatropha curcas (Capo Verde, Nicaragua) were processed, defatted and ground to obtain the meal. The meal was subjected to heat and 14 different chemical treatments to detoxify the meal of lectin and phorbolesters. Heat treatment inactivated lectin, but not phorbolester. One of the treatments reduced phorbolesters to a tolerable level of 0.09 mg/g. The treated meals with other ingredients were used in diets to assess acceptance and nutritive value of detoxified Jatropha curcas meal in two experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 had twelve (12) male weanling rats each, Sprague Dawley strain, 28-30 days old, pre-experimental average body weights of 8379±7.2 and 84.6±6.4 g, respectively. They were divided into three groups according to body weight and fed casein diet (control) and two diets in which Jatropha curcas was the protein source. In experiment 1, the rats accepted diet 1, but did not fully accept diet 2. Food intake, growth rate, protein efficiency ratio (PER) and food transformation index (T1) were significantly better (P<0.05) in diet 1 than in the casein and diet 2. In experiment 2, casein diet was better (P<0.05) in food intake, growth rate, PER and TI than diets 1 and 2. Food intake with Jatropha meal was significantly reduced and the rats had drastic body weight loss (P<0.05) and this might be due to the presence of phorbolesters in the diets. Generally, the presence of phorbolesters in food has significant effect on its acceptance. Jatropha meal obtained from treatment 3 had a crude protein (CP) content of 68%, far higher than the CP content of most oilseed meals (soyabean). This treatment seems a better method of detoxifying Jatropha curcas meal for livestock but in economic terms it is expensive to produce a meal from it.