Two researchers from the Faculty of Animal Science UGM, Prof. Dr. Ir. Ali Agus, DAA., DEA., IPU., ASEAN. Eng and Ir. Dyah Maharani, S.Pt., M.P., Ph.D., IPM, received awards from the Indonesian Record Museum (MURI) at an online award ceremony on Thursday (6/8).
Ali Agus received MURI award for his research in creating a complete feed fermentation technology, namely “burger feed”. On the other side, Dyah Maharani received an award for her research regarding DNA markers.
Ali Agus said that the burger feed technology had been developed for the last 15 years. This feed technology development was based on the fact that many cattle breeders provide a feed from agricultural waste, which has low nutrition quality.
“Commonly, cattle breeders provide a feed from straw, corn sugarcane, and concentrate feed derived from agricultural and industrial waste such as rice bran, coffee husks, cocoa, and so on,” said Ali Agus on Saturday (8/8).
To improve the feed’s nutritional quality, Ali Agus developed a feed burger coupled with multi-microbes called feed burger sauce to enhance its nutritional quality.
When cows consume feed with the addition or treatment of feed burger sauce, their nutrition and digestibility increase, which can increase livestock productivity.
“For beef cattle, it can accelerate livestock growth,” he added.
Ali said that the feed burger is an easy, cheap, safe, and useful technology. Feed burgers are made from straw, rice, wheat bran, molasses, and microbial solution. Straw is an easy and cheap material. The fermentation process also only lasts 24 hours.
The Faculty of Animal Science UGM had implemented feed burgers’ manufacture when the Merapi eruption occurred in 2010. Animal feed burgers are a solution for providing quality animal feed for tens of thousands of cows belonging to farmers affected by the eruption.
Dyah Maharani, who also received MURI award, conducted a study that found a tool to select chickens that would produce meat with unsaturated fatty acids, namely by using DNA markers in Stearoyl-CoA Desaturase (SCD) gene. This gene itself acts as a fatty acid metabolism.
“Chicken meat is believed to contain unsaturated fatty acids which play a role in reducing low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or often referred to as bad cholesterol,” he said.
This DNA marker has been patented at a Korean patent institute and is useful for making it easier for chicken farmers to choose the chickens to be cultivated.
He revealed that the modern diet shows people’s tendency to eat foods that trigger an increase in cholesterol in the blood. Without a balanced diet, this consumption behavior can lead to degenerative diseases such as coronary heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure.
“With the selection, the chickens will produce meat that contains unsaturated fatty acids, which are good for human health,” said Dyah.
Source: https://ugm.ac.id/id/berita/19858-dua-peneliti-fakultas-peternakan-ugm-terima-penghargaan-dari-muri
