Nutritive Value of Differently Processed Groundnut Meals and the Effect of Supplementation of the Meals with Amino Acids, Antibiotics and Vitamin B12

Abstract

Differently processed groundnut meals have been tested nutritionally by growth test as well as by nitrogen balance method on rats. Unheated and overheated meals are nutritionally inferior to those extracted under gentle conditions of heat and steam treatment. The thiamine content of groundnut meal was much reduced by high-steam treatment. Groundnut protein was observed to be deficient in methionine, lysine, isoleucine and threonine but not in cystine and tryptophan. The nutritional observations had good correlation with qualitative examination of amino acid bands on paper chromatograms and their comparison with the amino acids of casein. Supplementation with penicillin at the 0.02% level of the diet improved the nutritional quality of groundnut proteins, but aureomycin at 0.03% and streptomycin at the 0.02% level of the diet were not effective. Vitamin B₁₂, at 45 μg/kg of diet, improved the biological value of raw groundnut protein but had no effect on growth in the paired-feeding test.