Globally, agricultural and food-processing industries have to contend with the problem of waste management due to huge amounts of by-products generated. The problem is more severe in developing countries because of undeveloped or non-existent processing or conversion of such by-products into useful products (Odeyinka et al 2003). As a result, there are serious environmental pollution and waste of potential feed resources.
Difficulty in the conversion of high-moisture by-products arises from high cost of drying equipment and lack of simple and appropriate alternatives (Makinde and Sonaiya 2010). One of such agro-industrial by-products is pineapple waste (PW) from pineapple processing, mostly dumped and pollutes the environment. Pineapple waste occurs as pineapple peels and core, making about 40-50% of the fresh fruit (Buckle 1989) and contains mainly sucrose, fructose, glucose and other nutrients (Krueger et al 1992). FAO (2004) ranked Nigeria among the leading pineapple producing countries with about 800, 000 metric tonnes since 2001, there fore, efforts at finding better use for the PW generated from such huge quantities may be important in terms of environmental pollution and waste of potential animal feed resource.
Such efforts towards preventing and remedying pollution from PW by previous investigators involved sun drying and incorporation in animal diets with satisfactory results. Lamidi et al (2008) found that broiler chickens could tolerate up to 10% PW in their diets without any deleterious effect. Olosunde (2010) reported that WAD sheep could tolerate up to 45% PW but 30% PW was superior even against 0% PW when substituted for corn bran. Babatunde (1988) classified PW as an alternative feed ingredient to conventional wheat offal. These indicate potential for use as animal feed.
Nevertheless, the long drying period in these studies (about 5 or 7-14 days) may be exigent for an efficient and sustainable conversion of PW to animal feed. Therefore, the development of a quicker conversion procedure will be important in contributing to alternative animal feed, sustainability of animal protein supply, augmentation of rural income in pineapple growing areas and reduction in environmental pollution.
Makinde and Sonaiya (2007, 2010) developed a quick method (maximum of 4-h drying period) to convert into animal feed such wet by-products as pineapple waste (specifically underutilized abattoir by-products comprising blood and rumen contents) using vegetable carriers (wheat offal, dewatered rumen contents, maize offal and brewers’ dried grains) as absorbents. The studies showed that wheat offal (WO) had the highest absorbency compared to maize offal, brewers’ dried grains and dewatered rumen content. The procedure could be amenable to use in the quick conversion of PW into animal feed using WO. There is lack of information on a procedure for converting PW into animal feed using WO. Therefore, the objective of this study was to develop a simple procedure for converting pineapple waste into animal feed using wheat offal as an absorbent.