[Limiting amino acids of chickpeas (Cicer arietinum) for chickens and pigs]

Three experiments, two with broilers and one with pig, were conducted to determine the limiting amino acids of chickpea (Cicer arietinum). In the first 15% protein diets based on autoclaved chickpea were supplemented with methionine (0.20%), either alone or combined with threonine (0.025%) with no significant effect on growth or feed convertion of chicks; however, the addition of methionine tended to improve both parameters in relation to the unsupplemented diet. In the second experiment methionine (0.20%) and/or tryptophan (0.03%) were added to 15% protein diets based on either raw or autoclaved chickpeas. Cooking improved growth and feed efficiency in relation to the raw controls (P less than .05); methionine supplementation was beneficial for both raw and autoclaved diets (P less than .01); the addition of tryptophan was favourable only for the cooked chickpeas. A third experiment was conducted with weanling pigs to study the effect of methionine supplementation to sorghum-chickpea diets with 14 and 12% protein. In both cases, the addition of the sulphur amino acid improved growth and efficiency to the levels obtained with a 15.34% protein sorghum-soybean meal control.