Cletos Mapiye | Stellenbosch University (original) (raw)
Papers by Cletos Mapiye
PLOS ONE, 2021
Factors such as increases in population, urbanization, growth in per capita income and changes in... more Factors such as increases in population, urbanization, growth in per capita income and changes in consumer taste and preferences are causing gradual increases in livestock product consumption and demand. South Africa is addressing this predicted increase in livestock products demand by commercializing smallholder livestock producers. The Limpopo Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) Nguni Cattle Development Project is an example of such effort. The economic performance of these efforts needs to be evaluated. We use gross margin analysis to evaluate the performance of the Limpopo IDC Nguni Cattle Development Project. Additionally, we use regression analysis to identify factors influencing gross margins. Our results indicate that although smallholders show potential to commercialize, they lack commercial farming experience and require that a strong extension support system be used as one of the strategies to improve profitability. We also noted that individual farmers were more pro...
Tropical Animal Health and Production, Jan 9, 2010
Carcass quality characteristics are essential in affecting grading and revenue that pig producers... more Carcass quality characteristics are essential in affecting grading and revenue that pig producers realize. No information is available on the grading of carcasses in indigenous Mukota pigs of Zimbabwe. The objective of this study was to determine the influence of genotype (Mukota and Large White x Mukota) and sex on post-weaning growth performance and carcass traits of pigs fed maize cob-based diets. All pigs were weighed at 2-week intervals to estimate average daily gain, dressing percentage (DP), and carcass lengths. Backfat thickness was also measured. Males had higher body weight gains than females (P < 0.05). Growth rates for Mukota (0.31 +/- 0.010) and crossbred (0.41 +/- 0.030) pigs were lower in the cool season than the other seasons (P < 0.05). Body weights were consistently higher in the crossbred than in the Mukota pigs (P < 0.05). Mukota pigs showed a peak growth between 12 and 14 weeks post-weaning (P < 0.05). The DPs were 0.70 and 0.73 for the Mukota and crossbred pigs, respectively (P < 0.05). Crossbred pigs had longer (P < 0.05) carcasses than Mukota (655.5 +/- 1.68 versus 507.2 +/- 0.92 mm). Although there were no differences in the backfat thickness between males and females of the crossbred pigs, Mukota males had thicker backfat than the females (P < 0.05). Crossbreeding is, therefore, significant in improving carcass grades of Mukota pigs.
African Journal of Agricultural Research, 2008
Cattle production is the most important livestock sub-sector in South Africa. It contributes abou... more Cattle production is the most important livestock sub-sector in South Africa. It contributes about 25 30% to the total agricultural output per annum. However, cattle productivity is declining due to diseases and parasites prevalence, lack of feed resources, and poor breeding and marketing management. To increase sustainability and contribution of cattle in eradicating hunger and poverty in communal areas, there is need to make use of locally adapted breeds. In South Africa’s communal cattle enterprise, the Nguni breed is becoming a very important socio-economic drive for the resource-poor farmers. Nguni cattle development projects have been initiated in South Africa to improve livelihood of communal farmers. However, these projects are mainly concentrating on solving production constraints and ignoring marketing factors. This paper reviews the neglected marketing constraints and opportunities faced by beneficiaries of the Nguni cattle development program.
Environment, Development and Sustainability, 2020
Resolution of the existing disconnect between experts and farmers’ insights on sustainable farmin... more Resolution of the existing disconnect between experts and farmers’ insights on sustainable farming requires understanding of the key factors driving farmers’ perceptions on the concept. Interviews were conducted with 160 low-input farmers to evaluate the drivers of their perceptions of sustainable ruminant farming practices in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. It was found that farmers had negative perceptions on rangeland, breeding, livestock security and marketing management practices and positive perceptions on socio-cultural, family health and education practices. The major factors that influenced farmers’ perceptions of sustainable ruminant farming practices include location, age, gender and employment status. Males farming full-time in peri-urban areas were more likely to perceive decreases (p ≤ 0.05) while the young farmers had greater probability to perceive increases (p ≤ 0.05) in ecologically related ruminant farming practices. Married, more educated males farming full-...
African Journal of Range & Forage Science, 2019
We tested whether holistic planned grazing (HPG) and four-camp grazing (FCG) rotational grazing a... more We tested whether holistic planned grazing (HPG) and four-camp grazing (FCG) rotational grazing approaches influence beef cattle parasites counts compared with continuous, season-long (SLG) grazing. We expected that parasite counts would increase linearly with increasing camp occupancy by cattle from 1 d (70-camp, HPG) to 21–28 d (four-camp, FCG) to 180 d (one-camp per season, SLG). Tick and faecal egg counts were observed across seasons on 30 steers raised on a private farm in Cedarville, South Africa. Tick species identified were Rhipicephalus evertsi evertsi, Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) decoloratus, Hyalomma spp. and Amblyomma hebreaum with respective prevalences of 32%, 29%, 20% and 19%. Unidentified roundworms had the highest faecal worm egg counts (81.2%) followed by Coccidia (16.4%), Nematodirus (1.2%) and strongyles (1.2%). Overall, prevalence and mean counts for ticks and faecal worm eggs were highest in the hot wet season, with the SLG having greater (P ≤ 0.05) values than e...
A survey was conducted to determine the level of ad ption of forage and browse legumes and to ide... more A survey was conducted to determine the level of ad ption of forage and browse legumes and to identify the major constraints limiting their adoption in the smallhol der dairy sector of Zimbabwe. Sixty households were s l cted using stratified random sampling from a sampling frame of 174 registered farmers in Nharira-Lancashire Dairy Scheme in Chikomba District of Zimbabwe. The majority of households were aware (94.7 %) and 87.9 % adopted forage/browse legume technologies. R ults showed that most of the farmers were full-adopters based on the type of species used (66.7 %) and area und r forage (47.8 %) criteria. The most commonly adopted specie s w re Mucuna pruriens (60.6 %) and Leucaena leucocephala (53.5 %). The size of household, land size and number of dai ry c ttle significantly affected adoption of forage /browse legume technologies. Lack of inputs, low yields and lack of persistence of legumes and lack of fencing material were identified as core factors limiting adoption of f...
African Journal of Agricultural Research, 2007
This review focuses on challenges and possible interventions to improve the value of Nguni cattle... more This review focuses on challenges and possible interventions to improve the value of Nguni cattle products in the communal areas of South Africa. There is a general lack of adapted genetic material suited to the needs of the resource-poor cattle producers in South Africa. Nguni cattle are well suited to the management levels of communal farmers who require disease resistant multipurpose animals with low-maintenance feed requirements and relatively high-output. Developmental efforts to reintroduce the Nguni breed initiated in most rural areas of South Africa, especially in the Eastern Cape are reviewed. The possibility of selecting Nguni cattle for specific production traits and develop them into single-purpose herds is evaluated. It is recommended that development and research programmes aimed at reintroducing the Nguni breed in the rural areas should take a holistic and participatory approach in improving the value of Nguni cattle products. Key words: Draught power, hides, meat, ...
Market off-take rate is low in the communal cattle production system of Africa, with off-take rat... more Market off-take rate is low in the communal cattle production system of Africa, with off-take rates of between 5 and 10%, compared to 25% in the commercial sector. Pre-tested structured questionnaires were administered between June and July 2007 to 183 smallholder farmers to determine factors that influence decision to sell cattle in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa in three randomly selected municipalities. The average off-take rate in the sampled municipalities was 12%, which was much lower than that of the commercial sector (25%). Education, market distance, body condition, and herd size were significantly associated with municipality (p<0.05). Chris Hani had the highest number of the interviewees having reached at least primary education. Farmers in Amatole municipality sold their cattle in markets that were far away. The body condition of cattle in Chris Hani was the best. Lack of information access reduced cattle sales. Presence of markets that farmers like in or n...
La escasez de alimento, particularmente durante la epoca de sequia es una de las principales limi... more La escasez de alimento, particularmente durante la epoca de sequia es una de las principales limitantes para productividad animal en Zimbabwe. Los pastos mejorados muestran un gran potencial para reducir este problema. En contraste a las leguminosas forrajeras, los pastos mejorados son generalmente cultivos voluminosos y de alto rendimiento con una gran capacidad de emplear la fertilidad residual del suelo y de adaptacion ambiental. Existe una necesidad continua por encontrar pastos con altos rendimiento, climatica y edaficamente adaptados que respondan a las limitantes existentes y en continuo cambio, asi como a las demandas cambiantes y oportunidades de incrementar el abasto de alimento para los animales especialmente durante la epoca de sequia y bajo diferentes sistemas de empleo. El presente trabajo revisa la historia de la investigacion sobre seleccion a adopcion de pastos mejorados incrementar la productividad animal en Zimbabwe y presenta sugerencias sobre las necesidades de ...
Rural micro-enterprises play a pivotal role in developing country agriculture as the major source... more Rural micro-enterprises play a pivotal role in developing country agriculture as the major sources of inputs and ready markets for agricultural produce. This makes an understanding of their diversity and dynamism vital to issues of sustainable food security and poverty alleviation. This paper uses cluster analysis and a logit regression model to establish the factors underlying the heterogeneity of microenterprise firms with a view to unearth the reasons behind their inclination towards agro-dealership. Rural micro-enterprises were found to vary greatly due to size, firm life, capital intensity and their motives for entry into business. Capital intensity in tern determines firm size, willingness to expand and the firm’s likelihood to stay in business. Larger firms with a long firm life and a high capital base were found to have a greater tendency to deal in agribusiness commodities as opposed to small firms with lower capital intensity and a short firm life. It was concluded that fi...
Sustainability
The creation of commercialization opportunities for smallholder farmers has taken primacy on the ... more The creation of commercialization opportunities for smallholder farmers has taken primacy on the development agenda of many developing countries. Invariably, most of the smallholders are less productive than commercial farmers and continue to lag in commercialization. Apart from the various multifaceted challenges which smallholder farmers face, limited access to extension services stands as the underlying constraint to their sustainability. Across Africa and Asia, public extension is envisioned as a fundamental part of the process of transforming smallholder farmers because it is their major source of agricultural information. Extension continues to be deployed using different approaches which are evolving. For many decades, various authors have reported the importance of the approaches that effectively revitalize extension systems and have attempted to fit them into various typologies. However, there is a widespread concern over the inefficiency of these extension approaches in dr...
Environmental and Sustainability Indicators
Meat Science
The shelf-life of beef was compared from 7-months old Angus steers (281 ± 15.4 kg initial body we... more The shelf-life of beef was compared from 7-months old Angus steers (281 ± 15.4 kg initial body weight) fed 150 g/kg DM dried citrus pulp (DCP) or grape pomace (DGP) for 90 days. The antioxidant activity, bacterial load, and lipid and protein oxidation were evaluated on the longissimus lumborum subjected to air-permeable packaging at days 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 post-slaughter. Beef antioxidant activity was DGP > DCP > control (P ≤ 0.05). Beef from steers fed DGP or DCP had higher L* values (P ≤ 0.05) and fewer (P ≤ 0.05) coliform counts than steers fed the control diet. Beef antioxidant activity was DGP > DCP > control (P ≤ 0.05). Beef TBARS and carbonyl contents were DGP < DCP < control (P ≤ 0.05). Overall, antioxidant activity decreased (P ≤ 0.05), while bacterial loads, TBARS and carbonyl contents increased (P ≤ 0.05) during retail display for all diets. Current findings indicate that DGP could be a better natural preservative than DCP when included in beef cattle finishing diets.
Animal Feed Science and Technology
Abstract The effects of drying method [sun (7 days), oven (72 h at 60 °C) and freeze (∼72 h)] and... more Abstract The effects of drying method [sun (7 days), oven (72 h at 60 °C) and freeze (∼72 h)] and grape (Vitis vinifera L. cv. Pinotage, Shiraz and Sauvignon Blanc) variety on pomace fatty acid composition, polyphenolic content and antioxidant capacity were evaluated. Furthermore, the influence of sun-dried pomaces on rumen microbial diversity was assessed in vitro. Freeze-dried Shiraz had the highest proportions of 18:1n-9, 18:2n-6, total monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA), polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and content of polyphenolics compared to other drying × variety interactions (P ≤ 0.05). Freeze-dried Sauvignon Blanc had the highest proanthocyanidin content and antioxidant activity for both 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) relative to other drying × variety interactions (P ≤ 0.05). Regardless of variety and inclusion level, grape pomace variety reduced bacterial species abundance, but improved species diversity, evenness and richness compared to the control (P ≤ 0.05). Overall, freeze-dried Shiraz had the best fatty acid profile and highest polyphenolic content, while freeze-dried Sauvignon Blanc had the highest proanthocyanidin content and antioxidant activity.
Industrial Crops and Products
Abstract Grape pomace, a by-product of the winemaking industry, is a potential source of animal f... more Abstract Grape pomace, a by-product of the winemaking industry, is a potential source of animal feed but its nutrient and chemical composition is not sufficiently studied in South Africa. The current study investigated the changes in nutrient, amino acid and mineral composition, and in vitro digestibility of neutral detergent fiber of grape (Vitis vinifera var. Pinotage, Shiraz and Sauvignon Blanc) pomace after three drying treatments: sun (7d), freeze (72 h) and oven drying (72 h at 60 °C). Oven-dried Shiraz had the greatest dry matter, crude protein and the least ash content (P
South African Journal of Animal Science
Outlook on Agriculture
In South Africa, livelihoods of smallholder cattle farmers are constrained by a lack of appropria... more In South Africa, livelihoods of smallholder cattle farmers are constrained by a lack of appropriate production knowledge, climate change, inadequate support services, societal inequity, irrelevant pro-poor policies and inappropriate delivery of improved livestock technologies. A transdisciplinary team of local and international researchers conducted a workshop to explore opportunities and constraints to the delivery of a beef cattle custom feeding programme in Eastern Cape Province using participatory approaches, including visioning exercises. The main challenges to the cattle custom feeding programme reported by producers included lack of cattle production skills, lack of technical knowledge on feed production, limited funding and inconsistent cattle feed delivery. Participants envisioned a portfolio of locally based solutions that included prioritization of local feed production, identification of sustainable support networks, establishment of a communal herd to cover feeding cent...
South African Journal of Animal Science
PLOS ONE, 2021
Factors such as increases in population, urbanization, growth in per capita income and changes in... more Factors such as increases in population, urbanization, growth in per capita income and changes in consumer taste and preferences are causing gradual increases in livestock product consumption and demand. South Africa is addressing this predicted increase in livestock products demand by commercializing smallholder livestock producers. The Limpopo Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) Nguni Cattle Development Project is an example of such effort. The economic performance of these efforts needs to be evaluated. We use gross margin analysis to evaluate the performance of the Limpopo IDC Nguni Cattle Development Project. Additionally, we use regression analysis to identify factors influencing gross margins. Our results indicate that although smallholders show potential to commercialize, they lack commercial farming experience and require that a strong extension support system be used as one of the strategies to improve profitability. We also noted that individual farmers were more pro...
Tropical Animal Health and Production, Jan 9, 2010
Carcass quality characteristics are essential in affecting grading and revenue that pig producers... more Carcass quality characteristics are essential in affecting grading and revenue that pig producers realize. No information is available on the grading of carcasses in indigenous Mukota pigs of Zimbabwe. The objective of this study was to determine the influence of genotype (Mukota and Large White x Mukota) and sex on post-weaning growth performance and carcass traits of pigs fed maize cob-based diets. All pigs were weighed at 2-week intervals to estimate average daily gain, dressing percentage (DP), and carcass lengths. Backfat thickness was also measured. Males had higher body weight gains than females (P &amp;lt; 0.05). Growth rates for Mukota (0.31 +/- 0.010) and crossbred (0.41 +/- 0.030) pigs were lower in the cool season than the other seasons (P &amp;lt; 0.05). Body weights were consistently higher in the crossbred than in the Mukota pigs (P &amp;lt; 0.05). Mukota pigs showed a peak growth between 12 and 14 weeks post-weaning (P &amp;lt; 0.05). The DPs were 0.70 and 0.73 for the Mukota and crossbred pigs, respectively (P &amp;lt; 0.05). Crossbred pigs had longer (P &amp;lt; 0.05) carcasses than Mukota (655.5 +/- 1.68 versus 507.2 +/- 0.92 mm). Although there were no differences in the backfat thickness between males and females of the crossbred pigs, Mukota males had thicker backfat than the females (P &amp;lt; 0.05). Crossbreeding is, therefore, significant in improving carcass grades of Mukota pigs.
African Journal of Agricultural Research, 2008
Cattle production is the most important livestock sub-sector in South Africa. It contributes abou... more Cattle production is the most important livestock sub-sector in South Africa. It contributes about 25 30% to the total agricultural output per annum. However, cattle productivity is declining due to diseases and parasites prevalence, lack of feed resources, and poor breeding and marketing management. To increase sustainability and contribution of cattle in eradicating hunger and poverty in communal areas, there is need to make use of locally adapted breeds. In South Africa’s communal cattle enterprise, the Nguni breed is becoming a very important socio-economic drive for the resource-poor farmers. Nguni cattle development projects have been initiated in South Africa to improve livelihood of communal farmers. However, these projects are mainly concentrating on solving production constraints and ignoring marketing factors. This paper reviews the neglected marketing constraints and opportunities faced by beneficiaries of the Nguni cattle development program.
Environment, Development and Sustainability, 2020
Resolution of the existing disconnect between experts and farmers’ insights on sustainable farmin... more Resolution of the existing disconnect between experts and farmers’ insights on sustainable farming requires understanding of the key factors driving farmers’ perceptions on the concept. Interviews were conducted with 160 low-input farmers to evaluate the drivers of their perceptions of sustainable ruminant farming practices in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. It was found that farmers had negative perceptions on rangeland, breeding, livestock security and marketing management practices and positive perceptions on socio-cultural, family health and education practices. The major factors that influenced farmers’ perceptions of sustainable ruminant farming practices include location, age, gender and employment status. Males farming full-time in peri-urban areas were more likely to perceive decreases (p ≤ 0.05) while the young farmers had greater probability to perceive increases (p ≤ 0.05) in ecologically related ruminant farming practices. Married, more educated males farming full-...
African Journal of Range & Forage Science, 2019
We tested whether holistic planned grazing (HPG) and four-camp grazing (FCG) rotational grazing a... more We tested whether holistic planned grazing (HPG) and four-camp grazing (FCG) rotational grazing approaches influence beef cattle parasites counts compared with continuous, season-long (SLG) grazing. We expected that parasite counts would increase linearly with increasing camp occupancy by cattle from 1 d (70-camp, HPG) to 21–28 d (four-camp, FCG) to 180 d (one-camp per season, SLG). Tick and faecal egg counts were observed across seasons on 30 steers raised on a private farm in Cedarville, South Africa. Tick species identified were Rhipicephalus evertsi evertsi, Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) decoloratus, Hyalomma spp. and Amblyomma hebreaum with respective prevalences of 32%, 29%, 20% and 19%. Unidentified roundworms had the highest faecal worm egg counts (81.2%) followed by Coccidia (16.4%), Nematodirus (1.2%) and strongyles (1.2%). Overall, prevalence and mean counts for ticks and faecal worm eggs were highest in the hot wet season, with the SLG having greater (P ≤ 0.05) values than e...
A survey was conducted to determine the level of ad ption of forage and browse legumes and to ide... more A survey was conducted to determine the level of ad ption of forage and browse legumes and to identify the major constraints limiting their adoption in the smallhol der dairy sector of Zimbabwe. Sixty households were s l cted using stratified random sampling from a sampling frame of 174 registered farmers in Nharira-Lancashire Dairy Scheme in Chikomba District of Zimbabwe. The majority of households were aware (94.7 %) and 87.9 % adopted forage/browse legume technologies. R ults showed that most of the farmers were full-adopters based on the type of species used (66.7 %) and area und r forage (47.8 %) criteria. The most commonly adopted specie s w re Mucuna pruriens (60.6 %) and Leucaena leucocephala (53.5 %). The size of household, land size and number of dai ry c ttle significantly affected adoption of forage /browse legume technologies. Lack of inputs, low yields and lack of persistence of legumes and lack of fencing material were identified as core factors limiting adoption of f...
African Journal of Agricultural Research, 2007
This review focuses on challenges and possible interventions to improve the value of Nguni cattle... more This review focuses on challenges and possible interventions to improve the value of Nguni cattle products in the communal areas of South Africa. There is a general lack of adapted genetic material suited to the needs of the resource-poor cattle producers in South Africa. Nguni cattle are well suited to the management levels of communal farmers who require disease resistant multipurpose animals with low-maintenance feed requirements and relatively high-output. Developmental efforts to reintroduce the Nguni breed initiated in most rural areas of South Africa, especially in the Eastern Cape are reviewed. The possibility of selecting Nguni cattle for specific production traits and develop them into single-purpose herds is evaluated. It is recommended that development and research programmes aimed at reintroducing the Nguni breed in the rural areas should take a holistic and participatory approach in improving the value of Nguni cattle products. Key words: Draught power, hides, meat, ...
Market off-take rate is low in the communal cattle production system of Africa, with off-take rat... more Market off-take rate is low in the communal cattle production system of Africa, with off-take rates of between 5 and 10%, compared to 25% in the commercial sector. Pre-tested structured questionnaires were administered between June and July 2007 to 183 smallholder farmers to determine factors that influence decision to sell cattle in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa in three randomly selected municipalities. The average off-take rate in the sampled municipalities was 12%, which was much lower than that of the commercial sector (25%). Education, market distance, body condition, and herd size were significantly associated with municipality (p<0.05). Chris Hani had the highest number of the interviewees having reached at least primary education. Farmers in Amatole municipality sold their cattle in markets that were far away. The body condition of cattle in Chris Hani was the best. Lack of information access reduced cattle sales. Presence of markets that farmers like in or n...
La escasez de alimento, particularmente durante la epoca de sequia es una de las principales limi... more La escasez de alimento, particularmente durante la epoca de sequia es una de las principales limitantes para productividad animal en Zimbabwe. Los pastos mejorados muestran un gran potencial para reducir este problema. En contraste a las leguminosas forrajeras, los pastos mejorados son generalmente cultivos voluminosos y de alto rendimiento con una gran capacidad de emplear la fertilidad residual del suelo y de adaptacion ambiental. Existe una necesidad continua por encontrar pastos con altos rendimiento, climatica y edaficamente adaptados que respondan a las limitantes existentes y en continuo cambio, asi como a las demandas cambiantes y oportunidades de incrementar el abasto de alimento para los animales especialmente durante la epoca de sequia y bajo diferentes sistemas de empleo. El presente trabajo revisa la historia de la investigacion sobre seleccion a adopcion de pastos mejorados incrementar la productividad animal en Zimbabwe y presenta sugerencias sobre las necesidades de ...
Rural micro-enterprises play a pivotal role in developing country agriculture as the major source... more Rural micro-enterprises play a pivotal role in developing country agriculture as the major sources of inputs and ready markets for agricultural produce. This makes an understanding of their diversity and dynamism vital to issues of sustainable food security and poverty alleviation. This paper uses cluster analysis and a logit regression model to establish the factors underlying the heterogeneity of microenterprise firms with a view to unearth the reasons behind their inclination towards agro-dealership. Rural micro-enterprises were found to vary greatly due to size, firm life, capital intensity and their motives for entry into business. Capital intensity in tern determines firm size, willingness to expand and the firm’s likelihood to stay in business. Larger firms with a long firm life and a high capital base were found to have a greater tendency to deal in agribusiness commodities as opposed to small firms with lower capital intensity and a short firm life. It was concluded that fi...
Sustainability
The creation of commercialization opportunities for smallholder farmers has taken primacy on the ... more The creation of commercialization opportunities for smallholder farmers has taken primacy on the development agenda of many developing countries. Invariably, most of the smallholders are less productive than commercial farmers and continue to lag in commercialization. Apart from the various multifaceted challenges which smallholder farmers face, limited access to extension services stands as the underlying constraint to their sustainability. Across Africa and Asia, public extension is envisioned as a fundamental part of the process of transforming smallholder farmers because it is their major source of agricultural information. Extension continues to be deployed using different approaches which are evolving. For many decades, various authors have reported the importance of the approaches that effectively revitalize extension systems and have attempted to fit them into various typologies. However, there is a widespread concern over the inefficiency of these extension approaches in dr...
Environmental and Sustainability Indicators
Meat Science
The shelf-life of beef was compared from 7-months old Angus steers (281 ± 15.4 kg initial body we... more The shelf-life of beef was compared from 7-months old Angus steers (281 ± 15.4 kg initial body weight) fed 150 g/kg DM dried citrus pulp (DCP) or grape pomace (DGP) for 90 days. The antioxidant activity, bacterial load, and lipid and protein oxidation were evaluated on the longissimus lumborum subjected to air-permeable packaging at days 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 post-slaughter. Beef antioxidant activity was DGP > DCP > control (P ≤ 0.05). Beef from steers fed DGP or DCP had higher L* values (P ≤ 0.05) and fewer (P ≤ 0.05) coliform counts than steers fed the control diet. Beef antioxidant activity was DGP > DCP > control (P ≤ 0.05). Beef TBARS and carbonyl contents were DGP < DCP < control (P ≤ 0.05). Overall, antioxidant activity decreased (P ≤ 0.05), while bacterial loads, TBARS and carbonyl contents increased (P ≤ 0.05) during retail display for all diets. Current findings indicate that DGP could be a better natural preservative than DCP when included in beef cattle finishing diets.
Animal Feed Science and Technology
Abstract The effects of drying method [sun (7 days), oven (72 h at 60 °C) and freeze (∼72 h)] and... more Abstract The effects of drying method [sun (7 days), oven (72 h at 60 °C) and freeze (∼72 h)] and grape (Vitis vinifera L. cv. Pinotage, Shiraz and Sauvignon Blanc) variety on pomace fatty acid composition, polyphenolic content and antioxidant capacity were evaluated. Furthermore, the influence of sun-dried pomaces on rumen microbial diversity was assessed in vitro. Freeze-dried Shiraz had the highest proportions of 18:1n-9, 18:2n-6, total monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA), polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and content of polyphenolics compared to other drying × variety interactions (P ≤ 0.05). Freeze-dried Sauvignon Blanc had the highest proanthocyanidin content and antioxidant activity for both 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) relative to other drying × variety interactions (P ≤ 0.05). Regardless of variety and inclusion level, grape pomace variety reduced bacterial species abundance, but improved species diversity, evenness and richness compared to the control (P ≤ 0.05). Overall, freeze-dried Shiraz had the best fatty acid profile and highest polyphenolic content, while freeze-dried Sauvignon Blanc had the highest proanthocyanidin content and antioxidant activity.
Industrial Crops and Products
Abstract Grape pomace, a by-product of the winemaking industry, is a potential source of animal f... more Abstract Grape pomace, a by-product of the winemaking industry, is a potential source of animal feed but its nutrient and chemical composition is not sufficiently studied in South Africa. The current study investigated the changes in nutrient, amino acid and mineral composition, and in vitro digestibility of neutral detergent fiber of grape (Vitis vinifera var. Pinotage, Shiraz and Sauvignon Blanc) pomace after three drying treatments: sun (7d), freeze (72 h) and oven drying (72 h at 60 °C). Oven-dried Shiraz had the greatest dry matter, crude protein and the least ash content (P
South African Journal of Animal Science
Outlook on Agriculture
In South Africa, livelihoods of smallholder cattle farmers are constrained by a lack of appropria... more In South Africa, livelihoods of smallholder cattle farmers are constrained by a lack of appropriate production knowledge, climate change, inadequate support services, societal inequity, irrelevant pro-poor policies and inappropriate delivery of improved livestock technologies. A transdisciplinary team of local and international researchers conducted a workshop to explore opportunities and constraints to the delivery of a beef cattle custom feeding programme in Eastern Cape Province using participatory approaches, including visioning exercises. The main challenges to the cattle custom feeding programme reported by producers included lack of cattle production skills, lack of technical knowledge on feed production, limited funding and inconsistent cattle feed delivery. Participants envisioned a portfolio of locally based solutions that included prioritization of local feed production, identification of sustainable support networks, establishment of a communal herd to cover feeding cent...
South African Journal of Animal Science