Effect of Adding Urea and Molasses on The Chemical Composition of Rain Fed and Irrigated Sorghum Straw

Abstract

This work is conducted to evaluate the chemical composition of two samples of sorghum straw rain-fed and irrigated, by adding urea 4%, molasses 5%, and mixture of urea and molasses 2.5% to evaluate protein, starch, fat, ash, fiber, and moisture percentages.The Duncan multiple range test was used to test differences between means. The samples were analyzed in the laboratory of Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Wealth and Irrigation, Khartoum state, during July, 2015. The results of the analysis revealed that using urea had significant effect to increase protein percentage 15.77% in rain fed sorghum straw were recorded, while in irrigated sorghum straw there were no significant difference, in adding urea or molasses 16.76 % and 16.58 % respectively. The result showed that adding molasses had significant increase of starch percentage in the two samples of sorghum straw, but adding mixture molasses and urea decrease starch percentage compare with control in irrigated sorghum straw, while adding urea or molasses had the same effect in rain fed sorghum straw. Also using molasses shown significant effect of fat percentage in rain-fed straw, while there were no significant differences between using urea or molasses in irrigated sorghum straw. Using molasses had significant effect to reduce Ash percentages in both types of sorghum straw and recorded 4.25 %, and 1.75 % in irrigated and rainy sorghum respectively, compared with other additives. The result revealed that fiber percentage was decreased in all treatments in rain-fed sorghum straw, but there were no significant differences between treatments in irrigated sorghum straw. Also molasses had significant effect to increase moisture percentage in the two samples of sorghum straw, and the other treatments had the same effects.