Improving the Nutritional Quality of Fibrous Waste Through Fungal Fermentation for Use in Animal Feed

The feeding of monogastric species of productive interest is a problem for many countries, especially underdeveloped ones; therefore, it is essential to study alternative systems that do not compete with human food, particularly through the revaluation of agri-food waste by fungal fermentation processes, an eco-friendly and efficient strategy. This research evaluated the pretreatment of sugarcane bagasse with the enzymatic crude from Curvularia kusanoi L7, whose laccase activity was the basis of the treatment, and its effect on the nutritional quality of bagasse and on in vivo digestibility in broiler chickens and rabbits. Fiber modifications were assessed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and in vivo digestibility was analyzed using twenty 60-day-old male Cuban Brown rabbits and 30 broiler chickens (HEEB55). Both studies showed similar results: bagasse pretreated with the enzymatic crude presented higher in vivo digestibility than the control, and in poultry its digestibility did not differ from that of the corn-soybean control (87.46%). FTIR evidenced modification of the bagasse cell wall structure. It is concluded that pretreatment with the enzymatic crude rich in fungal laccases from C. kusanoi L7 increases the digestibility of sugarcane bagasse in diets for poultry and rabbits, representing a new option for developing fibrolytic products in modern livestock farming within the framework of fungal fermentation of fibrous sources for animal feed.