Nutritive value of undehulled sunflower meal as affected by multienzyme supplementation to broiler diets

Undehulled sunflower meal was evaluated in terms of amino acids profile, apparent and true amino acid availability, as well as AMEn and TMEn. A growth experiment was conducted in which SFM was included in iso-caloric and iso-nitrogenous diets for broilers at 0.0%, 5.0%, 10.0% and 15.0%. Diets were fed during the starter (1-14 d of age), and/or grower (15-28) and finisher (29-42 d of age) period. Diets were fed without or with Optizyme p-5. Results indicate that SFM contained 0.48% Meth and 0.90% lysine, whereas true availability of these amino acids was 97, 83, and 87%, respectively. It was observed that AMEn and TMEn values were 6.51 and 9.47 MJ\kg respectively. Optizyme addition had a small effect on energy values and no impact on amino acid availability. The results indicate that dietary SFM at 15.0% could be fed to broilers from d of hatch with no adverse effects on growth and feed utilization, since the correlations between sunflower meal intake and growth or feed utilization were not significant. Meanwhile, the lack of Optizyme effect on growth and feed utilization of broilers fed different levels of SFM confirmed the results of digestibility trial. Mortality rate was not affected by sunflower meal level. For practical application SFM may be included at 15% in broiler diets, meanwhile, a specific brand of commercial enzymes has to be developed to target NSP (S) of SFM.