Development of simple and precise method of arginine determination in rumen fluid by spectrophotometer

The objective of current study was to build up a convenient,economic and accurate procedure to determine arginine (arg) concentration in rumen fluid. rumen fluid was collected from 3 rumen fistulated chinese holstein dairy cows and added with or without (control) 1mmol/l unprotected arg and blank (with only medium) in to syringe system in triplicate as a replicate. all syringes were incubated in water bath at 39°c for 0,2,4,6,12 and 24 h and were terminated to measure the arg concentration. sakaguchi reaction method was used to analyze the arg concentration in rumen fluid by determining the rumen degradation rate of protected and unprotected arg. temperature,time and absorbance were optimized in the procedure based on sakaguchi reaction. color consistency remained 4-6 min. the optimum temperature (0-5)°c was observed for maximum optical density 0.663 at wave length 500 nm. minimum arg that could be determined in rumen fluid by spectrophotometer was 4-5 μg/ml. no significance (p>0.05) difference were observed between two results derived from spectrophotometer and amino acid analyzer methods. in conclusion,the spectrophotometer method of arg determination in rumen fluid based on sakaguchi reaction is easy,accurate,and economical and could be useful in learning arg metabolism in the rumen. © 2015,chemical society of pakistan. all rights reserved.