Slide 1 Good morning. My name is Rommel Sulabo, and it is my pleasure to share with you today the results of one of the studies that we conducted at the University of Illinois, looking at the digestibility of amino acids and energy content of copra expeller, palm kernel expeller, palm kernel meal, and soybean meal fed to growing pigs. Slide 2 Before I begin, I'd like to start with a brief outline of this presentation. I'll start with a a short introduction and state objectives of the study. After that, I'll describe the methodology and the results of the two experiments and briefly discuss the results, and then I will end with some overall conclusions. Slide 3 The interest in alternative co-products in the past few years has heightened mainly due to significant increases in grain and supplement costs. In this study, we evaluated two co-products of the vegetable oil industry. The first is copra meal, which is a co-product of coconut oil production, and palm kernel meal, which is a co-product of palm kernel oil production. Slide 4 Most of the coconut and palm kernel oil are produced using dry processing for oil extraction. Now, in this slide we have a simple schematic diagram of this process. But what I wanted to emphasize is the oil extraction step. There are two methods that are used to extract the oil from these ingredients. The first is mechanical pressing, and the second is solvent extraction. In the mechanical process, or mechanical pressing, the residual product typically contains a higher amount of residual oil, which ranges about 5-10%, and the product is often called expellers. For the solvent-extracted process, the residual oil content typically would contain a lower amount of oil -- and this is about less than 2% -- and the coproducts are often called meals or solvent-extracted meals. Slide 5 Now, both copra and palm kernel ingredients have been used in livestock feeding for quite some time. However, there is limited research in these feedstuffs, especially in swine. In fact, if we look at the current NRC, there are no values for copra expeller and palm kernel ingredients. Therefore, we conducted this study to determine the standardized ileal digestibility of amino acids and the energy content of one source of copra expeller, and two sources of palm kernel expeller. The first is an expeller product that was produced from an Asian oil palm variety that was sourced from Indonesia, and the second is an expeller product that was produced from an African oil palm variety that was sourced from Costa Rica. We also evaluated an African palm kernel meal, and finally we used soybean meal as a standard for these oilseed meals. Slide 6 Now let's look at Experiment 1. Slide 7 In this study, we used a total of six growing barrows with an intital body weight of 34 kg. All the pigs were cannulated at the distal ileum, and were arranged on a 6x6 Latin square design, with six diets and six periods. Slide 8 Here we have a small table showing the major ingredients of the experimental diets that were used in this experiment. One of the diets contains soybean meal as the sole source of protein and amino acids, and we formulated four other diets with 20% soybean meal and 30% of each of the test ingredients. The final diet is a nitrogen-free diet that was used to measure the basal endogenous losses for crude protein and amino acids. Slide 9 Pigs were fed three times their maintenance energy requirement. The experimental period for the study consisted of seven days, with five days for adaptation to the diet and two days devoted for ileal digesta collection. The digestibility coefficients for the study were calculated using the difference procedure, and the data were analyzed using the MIXED procedure of SAS. Slide 10 So now let's take a look at some of the key results of this study. Slide 11 The following table shows the crude protein and total lysine, methionine, threnine, and tryptophan composition of the ingredients. First is copra expeller, the two palm kernel ingredients, palm kernel meal, and soybean meal. First, let's look at the crude protein content of these ingredients. The copra expeller contained 22% crude protein, which is about half or less than half of the crude protein content of soybean meal. The palm kernel ingredients contained 13.6 to 14.4% crude protein, with the palm kernel meal containing slightly less crude protein than the expellers. For the lysine, methionine, threonine, and tryptophan composition of the test ingredients, we observed that for all the copra and the palm kernel ingredients, they were significantly lower than the concentrations of these amino acids compared with soybean meal. In fact, soybean meal contained eight, three, four, and six times greater amounts of lysine, methionine, threonine, and tryptophan respectively than these ingredients. Lysine to crude protein ratios are often used as a measure of protein quality. If you would look at soybean meal, soybean meal contains 6.2 grams of lysine for every 100 grams of crude protein. While the palm kernel ingredients contain 2.4 to 2.7 grams per 100 grams of crude protein. The copra expeller only contained 1.9 grams per 100 grams of crude protein. This clearly shows that the protein quality of these copra and palm kernel ingredients are poorer than those of soybean meal. Slide 12 The next four slides will be the standardized ileal digestibility of the four limiting amino acids. But first, let me take some time to set up our slides. On the x-axis would be the test ingredient, and the y-axis or the vertical axis would be the response variable. And for this slide, this would be the standardized ileal digestibility of the amino acid. For the standardized ileal digestibility of lysine, our results showed that soybean meal had greater SID of lysine than the copra expeller and all the palm kernel ingredients. Likewise, the African palm kernel expeller had greater SID of lysine than the palm kernel meal, with the copra expeller and the palm kernel expeller from Asia being intermediate. Slide 13 For the SID of methionine, soybean meal had greater SID of methionine than the copra expeller, the Asian palm kernel expeller, and palm kernel meal, with the palm kernel expeller from Africa being intermediate. Slide 14 For the SID of threonine, soybean meal had greater SID of threonine than the copra expeller and all the palm kernel ingredients. There were no differences in the SID of threonine between the copra expeller, palm kernel expeller, and palm kernel meal. Slide 15 Finally, on the SID of tryptophan, soybean meal had greater SID of tryptophan than the copra expeller, the Asian palm kernel expeller, and palm kernel meal, with the African palm kernel expeller being intermediate. There were no differences in the SID of tryptophan between the copra expeller and all of the palm kernel ingredients. Slide 16 Now let's move on to Experiment 2. Slide 17 For this experiment, we used a total of 48 barrows with an average body weight of 35 kg. Pigs were housed individually in metabolism cages, and pigs were arranged on a randomized complete block design with six diets and eight replicate pigs per diet. Slide 18 The following table shows the major ingredients of the diets used in this experiment. The first diet is a basal diet containing 96.3% corn, and then we formulated five other diets with 67.4% corn and 30% of each of the test ingredients. Slide 19 Pigs in this study were fed 2.5 times their maintenance energy requirement. Each experimental period consisted of 14 days: four days for the adaptation period to the diet, and five days each for the total collection of urine and feces. Digestibility coefficients were calculated using the difference procedure, and again, data were analyzed using the MIXED procedure of SAS. Slide 20 Now let's look at some key results of this study. Slide 21 The following figure shows the ME of the copra expeller, the palm kernel ingredients, and soybean meal on a dry matter basis. Our results showed that soybean meal had greater ME than the copra expeller and all of the palm kernel ingredients. Likewise, the copra expeller had greater ME than the African palm kernel expeller and palm kernel meal, with the Asian palm kernel expeller being intermediate. Slide 22 Overall, the results showed that for both amino acids and energy, the copra expeller and the palm kernel ingredients have lower nutritional value. This may be explained by a number of factors. The first factor that limits both amino acid digestibility and energy value of these ingredients is the high ADF and NDF content of these ingredients. If you would look at this figure, the copra expeller and all of the palm kernel ingredients have about 6-12 times greater ADF and NDF than soybean meal. And it's been shown that higher levels of ADF and NDF in the diet limits amino acid digestibility and energy value of these ingredients. Slide 23 Another factor may be the high non-starch polysaccharide content of both the copra and the palm kernel ingredients. In previous studies, it's been shown that 60-80% of the total polysaccharides in these ingredients are non-starch polysaccharides, and the main NSPs are beta-mannans, galactomannans, and cellulose. It's been shown that these non-starch polysaccharides reduce amino acid and energy digestibility, and also growth performance of pigs. Slide 24 Another factor that may limit amino acid digestibility, especially for heat-labile amino acids, is the effect of processing. For copra, it is important to reduce moisture from about 50% in the fresh coconut meat to about 6-8% prior to milling. This reduction in moisture is often performed using indirect or direct drying or sun-drying, and this may then lead to heat damaged proteins. Another critical step that may reduce the digestibility of heat-labile amino acids in the ingredients is the steam conditioning step in the oil extraction process. The ingredients are often conditioned at temperatures as high as 140 degrees Celsius for about 30 minutes; and in previous data, this is shown to reduce the digestibility of amino acids, specifically lysine. Slide 25 Finally, another factor that may reduce the digestibility of amino acids is the poor amino acid balance in both the copra and the palm kernel ingredients. This figure shows the arginine:lysine ratio of each of the ingredients. As you can see, for the palm kernel meal, palm kernel expeller, and the copra expeller, the arginine:lysine ratio ranged from 3.78 to a high of 4.95, which is almost double of the arginine:lysine ratio of soybean meal. This clearly indicates that if we feed higher levels of these ingredients, there is a tendency for greater arginine concentrations in the diet. And higher arginine concentrations may limit lysine digestibility. Slide 26 So in conclusion, the copra expeller, the palm kernel expeller, and palm kernel meal had lower amino acid digestibility and energy value than soybean meal. Copra expeller had similar amino acid digestibility but greater energy value than both the palm kernel expeller and palm kernel meal. And finally, palm kernel expellers had similar or greater amino acid digestibility and energy value compared with palm kernel meal. Slide 27 For more information on this study as well as other research we conduct at the Hans Stein Monogastric Nutrition Laboratory, please visit our website at nutrition.ansci.illinois.edu. Thank you.