Chemical composition of the foliage meal of Tithonia diversifolia

With the objective of determining the nutritional constituents, amino acids and the content of secondary metabo-lites of the foliage meal of Tithonia diversifolia. For this, plant material was collected 70 days after regrowth. The percentages of DM, CP, P, Ca, Si, CF, NDF, ADF, ADL, Cel, Hcel, CC were determined; amino acid profile (methionine, cystine, methionine + cystine, lysine, threonine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, proline, glycine, alanine, valine, isoleu-cine, leucine, serine, phenylalanine, arginine, histidine), and content of TT, TP, TCT, TBCT, FCT, Flv, Sap, Alk, Trit and TS. For statistical processing, descriptive techniques (mean and standard deviation) were used. The plant material of Tithonia diversifolia analyzed showed percentages of 22.23, 2.62, 0.013, 45.7, and 29.8% and 6.09 MJ/kg (CP, Ca, P, NDF, ADF and ME). For the secondary metabolites, they presented concentrations of 5.35, 12.38, 13.7, 9.58, 4.15, 24.49, 0.86, 1.36, 7.71 and 10.75 g/kg MS for total tannins, total phenols, total condensed tannins, total bound con-densed tannins, free condensed tannins, flavonoids, alkaloids, saponins, triterpenes and total steroids). The highest concentrations of amino acids were for lysine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, proline, glycine, alanine, valine, leucine, serine and phenylalanine with values of 13-30 g/kg of protein. It is concluded that the foliage meal of Tithonia diver-sifolia presents an adequate relation in its quality.