Effects of Enzymes and Cocktail of Enzymes on In vitro Digestibility of Brewers’ Dried Grains

The effects of three exogenous enzymes were determined individually and in cocktails on in vitro digestibility of Brewers’ Dried Grains (BDG). It was aimed at testing the hypothesis that cocktail of exogenous enzymes will perform better than individual enzymes. A Xylanase enzyme, a multipurpose enzyme and a phytase enzyme were used individually and in cocktails in a Completely Randomized Design comprising of seven experimental treatments and one control (no enzyme). The in vitro experiment was conducted at the Central Research Laboratory of University of Ilorin, Nigeria. It lasted for 48 hours.

In vitro digestibility values were calculated for dry matter, crude protein, ether extract, crude fibre and fibre fractions. Digestibility values obtained were analyzed in a one way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) with the aid of Statistical Analysis System. Treatments’ means were separated using Duncan Multiple Range Test.

Findings of the study showed that among the individual enzymes the multipurpose enzyme was significantly (P= .05) best in its effects on digestibility of dry matter, crude protein, ether extract and crude fibre with values of 52.75%, 75.87%, 69.18% and 73.45% respectively. Each of the cocktails was significantly better than the respective individual enzymes in their effects on digestibility of fibre fractions of BDG. Additive effects was observed especially for the digestibility of fibre fractions with 27.91% for acid detergent fibre digestibility for cocktail of xylanase and phytase compared to 18.29% and 9.21% respectively for xylanase and phytase. Positive synergistic effect was observed on neutral detergent fibre digestibility with 50.88% for cocktail of xylanase and phytase compared to 32.41% and 16.37% for xylanase and phytase respectively. Furthermore complementary effects were observed when xylanase and multipurpose enzymes were used as cocktail.

It is concluded that cocktail of different exogenous enzymes is better than individual enzymes in improving the digestibility of Brewers’ Dried Grains.