Effect of Cellulose Degrading Bacteria Isolated from Murrah buffaloes on In Vitro Fibre Digestibility

Twelve fibrolytic bacterial isolates from murrah buffaloes were used as microbial feed additive with buffalo rumen liquor as inoculum to study their effect on digestibility of pure Neutral detergent fibre (NDF). On the basis of the results three best fibrolytic isolates were selected to study their effect on digestibility of high fibre diet individually as well as in combination. Isolate NB-1 showed highest in vitro true dry matter digestibility of pure fibre (62.49±0.47%) followed by isolate NB-2 and NB-6 i.e. 61.42±0.18% and 60.17±0.51% respectively which was higher than control (50.81±0.24%) at 48 h post incubation. Isolate NB-1 also showed highest digestibility on high fibre diet (wheat straw: concentrate: 80:20) individually (57.83±0.71%) as well as in combination with isolate NB-3 (57.56±0.41%) and the increase was significantly (P<0.05) higher over control which showed 22.50±0.76% digestibility. All three isolates showed that partitioning factor(PF) individually as well as in combination over that of control remained on lower side. These findings indicates that the bacterial isolate NB-1 has the potential to be used as feed additive in the diet of ruminants for improving utilization of lignocellulosic feeds.