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Podcast: Conditioning and expansion increase nutritional value of soybean expellers.

Dr. Charmaine Espinosa, a post-doctoral research fellow in the Stein Monogastric Nutrition Lab, discusses the Conditioning and expansion increase nutritional value of soybean expellers. Adapted from a presentation at the 2021 ASAS Midwestern Section meeting, March 8-10.

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Research Report: Effects of increasing phytase dose on total tract digestibility of minerals and energy in pigs.

In most plant feed ingredients, the majority of P is bound to phytate, which reduces digestibility of P in pigs, and therefore, the concentration of digestible P in these ingredients is relatively low. Phytate is negatively charged in the intestinal tract and can bind both endogenous and dietary nutrients, which results in precipitation of non-digestible nutrient-phytate complexes. Therefore, it is possible that the use of exogenous phytase can also increase the digestibility of other nutrients than P. As an example, addition of exogenous phytase to diets also releases Ca from phytate, and thus, increases the digestibility of Ca. However, it has not been conclusively demonstrated that phytase also increases the digestibility of energy-generating nutrients and other minerals in diets fed to pigs and inconsistent results among experiments have been reported. Therefore, the objective of this experiment was to test the hypothesis that increasing phytase dose increases the apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) of minerals and gross energy (GE) in corn and soybean meal-based diets fed to growing pigs.

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Research Report: The amino acid digestibility and digestible indispensable amino acid score for rapeseed protein isolate increases after moderate heating resulting in a protein quality similar to whey protein isolate.

Rapeseed is the second most produced oilseed in the world after soybean, and after the oil is extracted, a protein-rich meal is the resulting byproduct containing greater concentrations of sulfur amino acids (AA; i.e., Met and Cys) and Lys compared with legumes and cereal grains. Rapeseed proteins have great potential as a high-quality plant-based protein for humans due to their well-balanced AA profile, high metabolic utilization of protein, a protein digestibility corrected amino acid score (PDCAAS) similar to soy and milk proteins, and easily separable antinutritional factors. However, to our knowledge, digestible indispensable amino acid score (DIAAS) has not been determined for rapeseed protein isolate and the level of processing required to concentrate rapeseed into a protein isolate warrants further evaluation of its protein quality. Therefore, this experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that heat treatment of rapeseed protein isolate will increase the digestibility of AA by growing pigs and result in a DIAAS that is comparable to soy and animal protein isolates.

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New publications from the Stein Monogastric Nutrition Laboratory.