Dr Kamalasanan Pillai at VKNARDEP in India has developed the technology to produce livestock feed pellets from azolla:

“There is an ever increasing demand for milk, meat and egg. The production often fails to cope up with demand with the result the prices of livestock production are going up. 70–80% of the cost of production of livestock is feed cost, and this is increasing on an average 10-15% per annum. Protein part of livestock feed is the costliest part. There is a global deficit of plant protein sources, for feed production for livestock, which act as a major source of protein for humans. This is made good by chemical protein equivalents like urea, anabolic boosters like steroids which affect both the health and longevity of livestock and human consumers.

We have developed azolla bio-feed technology to solve this problem. Azolla is a floating fern with a blue green algae endosymbiont in it, which fix atmospheric Nitrogen and produce a variety of protein and protein compounds and is No.1 in biomass 1000 MT/Hectare/year* and No.1 in protein 25–30 MT protein/Hectare/year.

The poor shelf life of green azolla was a major shortcoming solved by azolla based feed pellet technology. The azolla based pellet is cheaper by 10–15%. Moreover, it improves the quantity and quality of milk, meat etc. by 5–10% production. The technology is eco-friendly, renewable, economically feasible and is a boon to the farming community.”

(* metric tonnes per hectare per year)