Ribeiro Pereira et al., 2007. Livest. Res. Rural Dev., 19 (3) article #45

The jackfruit tree is dispersed in world tropical areas and has been used in ruminant feeding without previous nutritional knowledge. The objective of the research was to evaluate flint and soft jackfruit, as well as the components of the fruit, through the semi automated in vitro gas production technique, chemical composition and in vitro dry matter digestibility. The most representative components for both jackfruits, was the pulp (44 and 36% in dry matter basis, for flint and soft jackfruit, respectively). The pulp and the pit were the components that presented the best nutritional value for both jack fruit kinds. The dry matter (DM) and crude protein (CP) values were 27.8 and 31.0% (DM), 6.21 and 6.81% (CP) for flint and soft jack fruits respectively. The leaves of neuter detergent fiber (NDF) were close for flint (27.2%) and soft jackfruit (27.1%). The DM digestibility (DMD) for flint and soft jackfruit were closed and high (85.2 and 83.9%, respectively), evidencing high nutritional value. The jack fruits presented closed "A" values (334 and 342 mL for flint and soft jackfruits, respectively), already for "L" and "µ" the flint jackfruit presented better values (1h:06min and 0,09 mL/h) when compared with soft jack fruit (1h:24min and 0,08 mL/h). The two jack fruit kinds present potential for ruminant feeding.