Pretreatments of animal feed for improved digestibility and its influence on biogas production

Abstract

Ruminants are essential for human nutrition worldwide. A significant part of the plant biomass used as feed is not efficiently digested by the livestock. Nevertheless, physical, chemical, and biological pretreatments of the plant biomass and supplementation of feed with the exogenous enzymes can significantly improve ruminant digestion. Such pretreatments and supplementations also have direct impacts on the methane production by the animals. Therefore, advances in efficient and cost-effective pretreatments of lignocellulosic feed to increase the efficiency of ruminant digestion are essential for ruminant production and might have positive impacts on the enteric methane emissions by the livestock.