LEISA Magazine, Volume 21
Issue 3 - Small animals in focus
Azolla: a sustainable feed for livestock
The Natural Resources Development Project (NARDEP) in India has been working on azolla for the last three to four years, studying its potential as a feed for farm animals and exploring cost effective methods for the mass multiplication of azolla in farmers’ homesteads. Azolla is a floating fern and belongs to the family of Azollaceae. Azolla hosts a symbiotic blue green algae, Anabaena azollae, which is responsible for the fixation and assimilation of atmospheric nitrogen. Azolla, in turn, provides the carbon source and favourable environment for the growth and development of the algae. It is this unique symbiotic relationship that makes azolla a wonderful plant with high protein content. Azolla is easy to cultivate and can be used as an ideal feed for cattle, fish, pigs and poultry, and also is of value as a bio-fertilizer for wetland paddy. It is popular and cultivated widely in other countries like China, Vietnam, and the Philippines, but has yet to be taken up in India, in a big way. Dairy farmers in South Kerala and Kanyakumari have started to take up the low cost production technology and we hope that the azolla technology will be taken up more widely by dairy farmers, in particular those who have too little land for fodder production.
P. Kamalasanana Pillai, S. Premalatha, S. Rajamony© 2004-2010 ILEIA. For comments, please mail webmaster(at)ileia.nl.