Moringa oleifera

Am, Suleiman, Am, Orire, Soe, Sadiku & Gg, Bake, 2023, Growth performance, nutrient utilization and survival rate of Clarias gariepinus fed varied inclusion of processed Moringa oleifera diets, International Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Studies 11 (1), pp. 36-40 : 37

Processing of Moringa oleifera

M. oleifera fresh leaves were procured from Kure Market, Along Dutsen Kura Road, Minna, Nigeria. Sellers were targeted early in the morning prior to their arrival at the market to ensure fresh leaves were obtained. They were taken to the Laboratory of the Department of Water Resources, Aquaculture and Fisheries Technology ( WAFT), Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State, Nigeria. The leaves were then detached manually from the branches, thoroughly washed to remove the dirt and prevent deterioration of phytochemicals as observed by Ochang et al., 2015; Sahira Banu & Cathrine, 2015 [ 9, 10]. They were drained properly and air dried at room temperature to prevent nutrient loss for seven (7) days (Suleiman et al., 2018) [ 11, 12]. The leaves were reduced to smaller quantities using pistle and mortar and further fed into electrical motorised hammer mill, milled into fine powder, package in polythene and stored at -4 °C prior to usage (Suleman et al., 2018) [ 15].

Processing of M. oleifera Powder

The milled moringa was processed using aqueous, ethanol and hexane solvent. 250 g was measured using Ohaus sensitive weighing balance ( PA 313) and mixed with 500 ml volume of each solvents in a 1000 ml bottle. The bottles were tightly closed to prevent evaporation of the solvents and were placed on the laboratory table. They were agitated within an interval of 8 hours to enable effective dissolution of soluble matters into the solvents (Ezearigo et al., 2014) [ 5]. After 72 hours, muslin cloths were laid in triple layers, labelled according to each treatment in a different containers while the contents were poured, filtered and macerated. Solvent of each treatment was added to rinse the concentrated liquid from the residues. The filtrates were evaporated to dryness under pressure at 45 ºC using a rotary evaporator ( RE 300). The extracts were labelled as Moringa Aqueous ( MA), Moringa Ethanol ( ME) and Moringa Hexane ( MH). The extracts were preserved at -4 °C until further usage (Chakraborty et al., 2018) [ 4].

Diet Formulation

Seven (7) iso-nitrogenous diets were formulated for the experiment to contain 40% Crude protein each with a Commercial Reference Diet (CRD) for the experiment. The CRD and Zero Supplement Diet (ZSD) serve as the control diet while Diets such as Moringa Aqueous Diet (MAD), Moringa Ethanol Diet (MED) and Moringa Hexane (MHD) were the tested diets formulated at 3% and 5% inclusion levels respectively ( Table 1 ). Prior to formulation and compounding of the experimental diets, major ingredient were milled to a fine particles and sample were taken for proximate analysis before inclusion level of each ingredient was determined. Each ingredient was weighed in accordance with the calculation ( Table1 ) and were thoroughly mixed together to ensure homogeneity (Suleiman et al., 2018) [ 11, 12]. The extract were dissolved in 350 ml of warm water which was used to form a kilogram of dough. The feeds were pelleted to 2 mm size and dried at 26 ° C for 72 hours. They were packaged in a labelled airtight containers, stored at -4 ° C prior to feeding trial (Ochang et al., 2015) [ 9].