NUTRITIVE VALUE OF COMMON BUCKWHEAT AS A SUPPLEMENT TO CEREAL GRAINS WHEN FED TO LABORATORY RATS

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to determine the nutritive value of common buckwheat as a supplement to the common cereal grains. 192 Spraque-Dawley weanling rats were randomly assigned to one of 32 treatment groups with three males and three females per group. The experimental treatments consisted of one of the common cereal grains, wheat, oats, barley, corn, rye, triticale, white rice or paddy rice, fed as a monocereal or with 25, 50 or 75% of the cereal replaced by common buckwheat. An additional 54 rats were utilized to determine digestibility coefficients for the monocereal diets fed in the growth trial. Weight gain, feed intake and feed conversion efficiency improved at each increment of buckwheat inclusion for all grains under test. Cereals with the lowest concentration of lysine showed the most marked improvement due to supplementation with common buckwheat. Digestibility coefficients of 67.4% for dry matter, 65.8% for crude protein and 66.5% for energy were lower for buckwheat compared with the cereals which averaged 84.8% for dry matter, 81.8% for crude protein and 85.2% for energy. It would appear that buckwheat may be a valuable supplement to cereal grains as its high lysine content compensates for the limiting lysine content in diets consisting predominantly of cereals. Key words: Rat, buckwheat, cereals, supplement