The nutritional value and toxic properties of buffalo gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima) plant.

Abstract

Buffalo gourd (BG), Cucurbita foetidissima, vine contains a material that was toxic to mice. Extracting the vine with either water or ethanol greatly improves the performance of the mice. However, water treatment of the vine had removed the bitter substances and gave a better response than ethanol extraction which partially reduced these materials. Chicks received up to 10% of BG seeds in a soybean meal diet had no significant change in their growth as compared to those fed control diet. However, as the concentration of the seeds increased to 20% or above, a significant reduction in chicks performance were found in comparison to the soybean meal. Signs of toxicities which caused high mortality rate were also observed in those chicks. Cleaning and washing of BG seeds did not improve chicks performance as compared to those on uncleaned-unwashed seeds. Birds fed BG hulls were not significantly different than the control diet and showed no signs of neuromuscular abnormalities or death. Feeding defatted seeds and defatted embryo diets depressed the growth. The addition of 24% of BG seeds to the regular soybean meal diet showed no difference in growth as compared to the control birds. The neuromuscular abnormalities were observed only in birds fed defatted seeds, defatted embryo and whole seed diets but not hulls or whole seed uncleaned diets. This raises a serious issue of just what is causing these neuromuscular problems in some diets and not all of them. These abnormalities disappeared after the chicks were shifted back to the regular starter diet. Incorporation of 10% of the whole BG roots in practical chick ration significantly depressed growth. Toxicity problems were also observed in these chicks. Water extraction of the roots improved performance and appeared to reduce the bitter material in the diet and the incidence of mortality when compared to those fed the dried roots. A preliminary study using silage as prepared from BG forage has shown no palatability problems when fed to young heifers. Incorporation of milo with BG forage did not improve the palatability of the silage. This was a great improvement in feed intake values when compared to the feeding of fresh cut forage to calves or cows.