In certain parts of the world the use of grain crops for animal feeding is limited and where there is competition for direct human use, alternative feeds must be considered. Root crops are a potential feedstuff for growing pigs in some situations and the objective of the present programme of work is to establish the nutritional value of these materials and to investigate factors which effect their utilisation in pig diets.

The high moisture content of root crops results in low nutrient density and the current experiment was designed to examine whether this resulted in any limitation on food intake and subsequent growth performance of growing pigs. This was achieved by formulating diets to contain different proportions of root crop and concentrate; these diets were isoenergetic/isonitrogenous when based on dry matter but varied in nutrient density when expressed on a fresh weight basis.