The main findings of the study were that: (1) Goats fed Bauhinia acuminata responded with improved diet digestibility, N retention and growth rate when the Bauhinia acuminata was supplemented with water spinach; (2) However an important negative effect was that the improvement in diet digestibility by supplementation with water spinach led to increases in methane production per unit diet DM digested; (3) Supplementing Bauhinia acuminata foliage with leaves from a bitter variety of cassava reduced the in vitro production of methane when compared with supplementation by leaves from a sweet variety of cassava...

The study aimed at the utilization of locally available feed resources for increasing growth performance and reducing enteric methane emissions from goats in Lao PDR. The specific objectives were following: to evaluate the of water spinach as a source of high soluble protein and biochar on methane production in an in vitro system with substrate of Bauhinia acuminata or Guazuma ulmifolia leaves; to evaluate the effect of water spinach as a source of high soluble protein and biochar on feed intake, digestibility, N retention, methane emission and growth performance of goats fed Bauhinia acuminata foliages plus molasses or dried cassava root chip as the basal diets; to examine the effect of replacing water spinach by cassava foliage and/or brewer’s grain on feed intake, digestibility, N retention and growth performance of goat fed Bauhinia acuminata plus dried cassava root chip as the basal diets; to compare the sweet or bitter of cassava leaves and biochar on gas production, methane content of the gas and methane ml/g DM digested in an in vitro incubation.