Foldscope Based Spot Test to Identify Adulteration of Urea in Oilseed Meals and Rice husk in Brans- Field Demostration at Dairy Farms:#Indiafoldscopephase 1

Jan 12, 2019 • 3:59 AM UTC

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Various oilseed meals (the residue remains after oil extraction) are fed to Livestock and Poultry as a Protein Source/Supplement. Among feed ingredients used for feeding of animals, oilseed meals are costly. Because of this, adulteration with cheap nitrogen sources mainly urea is often problem in oilseed meals. However, simple and sensitive spot test is not available to detect urea adulteration. In this context, a simple foldscope based methodology have been developed in our lab.
Rice bran and de-oiled bran are fed to Livestock and Poultry as energy sources. Rice husk which do not have any nutritive value is often adulterated with brans thereby reducing the quality. Currently, rice husk adulteration is identified through laborious chemical analysis. As rice husk and brans show distinctly different morphological features under foldscope, we could able to identify the adulteration of rice husk in brans.
With this background, we visited traditional and modern dairy farms around Hyderabad and demosntrated these two methodologies to the livestock farmers/technical personnel associated with quality control of feeds with the aid of foldscope. We found most of the cottonseed meals fed to animals are often adulterated with urea and collected suspected samples for further lab analysis.