Chinese albizia (Albizia chinensis)

Chinese albizia (Albizia chinensis) was reported to be an important browse tree in hilly areas of India. In the high altitude states of India it is combined with other tree forages (e.g. Acacia catechu, Artocarpus lakoocha, Bauhinia variegata, Dendrocalamus hamiltonii, Ficus roxburghii, Grewia optiva, Leucaena leucocephala, Morus alba and Quercus incana) to make the integral part of ruminant diets (Sahoo et al., 2010).

The branches can be lopped for fodder at the end of the growing season when the leaves are past their succulent stage as they may be toxic to livestock (see Potential constraints above) (Manuja et al., 2001; Göhl, 1982). However, literature is relatively scarce on its use as fodder and it reported Chinese albizia to have a poor feeding value.

During the assessment of different forage trees in India, Chinese albizia was found to have high DM digestion rate with a high rapidly soluble fraction. It was found to have low potential extent of digestion (3%), possibly due to a high lignin content which resulted in low NDF digestion rate. The greater amounts of potentially digestible cell wall remaining at 48 h in Chinese albizia suggested that this forage would limit animal intake due to greater rumen fill, because indigestible matter is a primary limitation in rumen digesta turnover and, as such, appears to be quite inferior to other forage trees such as mulberry (Morus alba), Grewia optiva, and Celtis australis to support performance of ruminants (Singh et al., 1989).

In spite of a relatively high protein content, Chinese albizia had relatively low in vitro degradable nitrogen in comparison to other tree forages (Sahoo et al., 2010). This was in accordance with previous observations where Chinese albizia was found to have high binding capacity with condensed tannins but also further effective dissociation of the tannin-protein complex throughout the gastrointestinal tract (Diaz-Hernandez et al., 1997). The in sacco N digestibility of Chinese albizia measured in goats fed a rice straw basal diet was also low. It was shown that oven drying the foliage could significantly (+ 35%) increase this parameter (Ahn et al., 1989).

When goats fed ad libitum Guinea grass received a supplement of 100 g DM/d of Chinese albizia foliage, this supplement had no positive effect on feed intake. Chinese albizia supplementation increased N digestibility but goats remained in negative N balance. In this experiment Chinese albizia leaves had a low rumen degradability (39% after 48 h in the rumen) which was consistent with other results (Ash, 1990).