The Effect of Detoxificated Leucaena leucocephala Leaf Meal to Prenatal Development of Wistar Rat Fetus.

The Effect of Detoxificated Leucaena leucocephala Leaf Meal to Prenatal Development of Wistar Rat Fetus Ngurah Intan Wiratmini11, I Gusti Lanang Oka2, Sentana Putra2 and I Gede Mahardika2 1Department of Biology, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Udayana University, Bali, Indonesia 2Faculty of Animal Husbandry, Udayana University, Bali, Indonesia *Corresponding Author E-mail: wiratminiintan@yahoo.com ABSTRACT Leucaena leucocephala is a leguminous tree that contains high level of nutrition and drought-tolerant. Therefore, it is widely used as animal feed. However, Leucaena leucocephala also contains the antinutritional factor mimosine, thus limiting its usage as feed. This study aims to investigate the effect of combining detoxificated Leucaena leucocephala leaf meal (DLLLM) with pregnant rat diet to the prenatal development of their embryos. Twenty four pregnant Wistar rats were grouped into four experimental groups based on DLLLM level in their diet: 0% DLLLM (P0), 7,5% DLLLM (P1), 15% DLLLM (P2) and 22,5% DLLLM (P3). The experimental diet was given starting from post coitus (day 0) until 18th day of pregnancy. At the 18th day of pregnancy, caesarotomy was done to all samples from all groups to remove their fetuses. The result of this experiment showed that there was no significant difference between the control and experimental groups regarding the number of implantation, the number of reabsorbed embryos, the number of live fetuses, fetal weight, and fetal length (P>0.05). There is no morphological deformity found in either control or experimental groups. It is concluded that the addition of up to 22.5% DLLLM into the diet of pregnant rats diet does not inhibit the prenatal development of fetuses. Keywords: Leucaena, Detoxification, Prenatal development of fetus, Rats TUVWXY