ANN 111: Principles of Animal Nutrition and Feed Technology (2+1)

ROOTS AND TUBERS

• Roots are underground parts of plant e.g., Turnip, beet root, carrot etc.,
• Tubers are thickend stem usually formed in underground e.g., potatoes, Cassava, Sweet potatoes.
• Roots contains sucrose while tubers contains starch or fructan as carbohydrate.
• Feeding livestock with roots and tubers are common in Europe.
• However, Cassava is widely fed to livestock in India.
• Cassava contains two cyanogenetic glucosides, which liberates hydrocyanic acid (HCN).
• HCN poisoning leads to death and wilting reduces HCN content to safe level.