by
Pierre Fortin, Aquaculture Nutritionist, Aquanéo, Techna France Nutrition,
France
Protein is a major cost in aquafeed as aquatic animals have high protein needs
compared to terrestrial animals. Furthermore, fishmeal is very often used in
fish and shrimp diets. Its price increases faster than other ingredients. Over
a 25 years period, fishmeal price increased by 350 percent, while soybean
increased only by 150 percent (Source: Indexmundi).
In this situation, feed producers need to be careful when using protein sources
to fulfil the needs of the animals. First from an economic point of view, but
also regarding the quality of this protein. Indeed, protein itself doesn’t mean
a lot, protein could have a low digestibility (because of intrinsic composition
of an ingredient, or suffer from processing for eg), it could also be
unbalanced. This could result in lower growth of the animal. This brief article
will help you save some cost on your feed while safeguarding its quality.
The quality of feed relies on the quality of its ingredients
“Quality inputs lead to quality outputs”, this saying is also true for feed. If
one doesn’t watch what they buy or doesn’t handle it properly; even fish meal
could be of a lower quality than vegetable ingredients. It depends on the raw
material quality, is it processed fresh, how is it cooked and dried, extracted,
protected and finally stored? These key points are similar for quite a lot of
ingredients. Therefore, analysis can give a good overview of the quality of
ingredients. Specific criteria exist for each raw material.
Some important analysis to ensure the quality of several ingredients
For example, fishmeal quality could be impacted before processing if the fish
are not stored properly; this will be evaluated by the biogenic amines values
which are the result of degradation of specific amino acids. Processing could
also have an impact on the quality of the product by overcooking; this could be
evaluated by oxidative parameters. Overall quality of the proteins within
fishmeal is often evaluated by pepsin digestibility.
Similar parameters could be analysed on animal meals such as poultry meal, meat
and bone meal. For soybean meal, different tests exist such as the urease test
and anti-trypsic factors. They will analyse the processed well-cooked protein,
with enhanced digestibility, which, if subject to overcooking, may result in
lower digestibility of certain sensitive amino acids such as lysine. Free
lysine could also be an indicator of the quality of DDGS. The main risk with
these products is overcooking which reduces the overall digestibility.
Read more, HERE.
The Aquaculturists
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