Study on Chemical Composition of Azolla filiculoides and Hydrilla verticillata

The main objectives of this study were to determine and measure the chemical composition as well as the mineral composition of Azolla filiculoides and Hydrilla verticillata. Both plants are an aquatic plant that has high potential to be introduced as a new alternative to ruminant animal feed. Samples were collected around Tembila area, Besut, Terengganu and were dried and ground before the plants were analyzed by using proximate analysis as well dry ashing method for Induced Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES). The proximate analysis was used to measure the dry matter (DM), ash, crude fibre (CF), crude protein (CP), ether extract (EE) and Nitrogen-Free Extract (NFE). The minerals composition of Copper (Cu), Zinc (Zn), Iron (Fe) and Calcium (Ca) were measured using ICP-OES. The result of this analysis shows that Azolla contains the highest protein and ether extract content compared to Hydrilla. As in mineral composition, Hydrilla and Azolla showed that it has significant differences (p < 0.05) in between the two plants. This study revealed that Azolla is more suitable to be used as a source of fodder mixture to ruminant as it contains a more nutritive value in terms of high crude protein and ether extract that are essential for ruminant diet. Keywords: Aquatic plants, proximate analysis, ICP-OES, ruminant die