Nutritional and Ethnomedicinal Potentials of Parquetina nigrescens Leaf Extracts in Livestock Production

Abstract

The increasing clamour for organic animal production necessitated the investigation on the potential of Parquetina nigrescens leaf extract in livestock production. The extract of the leaves of Parquetina nigrescens was evaluated for the proximate, phytochemical, minerals and vitamins compositions. The fresh leaves of Parquetina nigrescens were harvested around 6:00hrs and 6:30hrs, thereafter, they were washed. 20g of the fresh leaves harvested were blended with 100ml of water using a blender. The blending was done for about 5 minutes after which the blended samples were well filtered using standard filter papers (Whatman paper No. 1). The filtrates were then used for chemical analysis. Proximate analysis indicated that the leaf extracts had high concentration of moisture (7.80%), crude fibre (9.38%), crude protein (8.40 %), ether extract (9.38%), and ash (6.90%). Mineral and vitamin analysis showed that Parquetina nigrescens leaf extract contained macro minerals (%) such as Na (0.36), Ca (29.96), P (6.88), K (23.21), Mg (4.05), micro minerals such as Si (23.71 ppm), Al (4.34%), Fe (3.59%), Ti (2.11ppm), Mn (1.46 ppm) and Cl (0.33%) and high content of vitamins A (2.27 mg/100g), B1 (270.25 mg/100g), B2 (850.26 mg/100g), B3 (325.20 mg/100g), C (16.20 mg/100g) and E (0.015 mg/100g) respectively. Phytochemical evaluation revealed that Parquetina nigrescens leaf extract have high contents of alkaloids (8.27 mg/100g), flavonoids (2.25 mg/100g), glycosides (0.06 mg/100g), saponin (5.20 mg/100g), steroids (0.20 mg/100g), phenols (0.86 mg/100g), terpenoids (0.52 mg/100g), tannin (6.30 mg/100g) and anthraquinones (1.55 mg/100g). The results showed that Parquetina nigrescens leaf extract are of high nutritional quality due to high crude protein, vitamins and mineral contents especially calcium and potassium with the resultant phytochemicals attributes that could serve as feed additives in monogastric animal production.