Canola meal and soybean meal are the most commonly used amino acid sources in diets for growing pigs. However, through genetic selection, varieties of canola with greater concentrations of crude protein and reduced concentrations of fiber have been identified. Following oil extraction, the resulting high-protein canola meal contains 3 to 5 percent more crude protein than conventional canola meal. It is, therefore, expected that high-protein canola meal contains more digestible energy (DE) and metabolizable energy (ME) than conventional canola meal when fed to growing pigs. Therefore, experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that DE and ME in high-protein canola meal is greater than in conventional canola meal.

Introduction

Pigs have a poor utilization of phytate-bound P derived from plant feed ingredients and supplemental phytase is, therefore, often used in pig diets (Selle and Ravindran, 2008), which is a very effective way to increase P digestibility. However, digestibility of Ca is also increased by phytase (Lee et al., 2023).

Bestzyme has recently been developed as a novel phytase, but there is limited information on how this phytase works on P and Ca digestibility. Therefore, the objective of this experiment was to test the hypothesis that a novel microbial phytase can replace some of the dietary P and Ca in diets for growing pigs without negatively impacting the standardized total tract digestibility (STTD) of P and Ca.

Lopez, Diego A., Matt D. Miesner, Jordan T. Gebhardt, Charles R. Stark, Hans H. Stein, and Chad B. Paulk. 2026. Effect of pellet die thickness on standardized ileal digestibility of amino acids when pelleting diets fed to growing pigs. Translational Animal Science, 2026, 10, txaf163. doi.org/10.1093/tas/txaf163 Link to full text.

Lopez, Diego A., Hans H. Stein, Matt D. Miesner, Jordan T. Gebhardt, Charles R. Stark, and Chad B. Paulk. 2025. Effect of feed conditioning time prior to pelleting on standardized ileal digestibility of amino acids and total tract digestibility of energy in diets fed to growing pigs. Translational Animal Science, 2025, 9, txaf153 

Hodgkinson, Suzanne M., Natascha Stroebinger, Hans H. Stein, Natalia S. Fanelli, Sonja de Vries, Nikkie van der Wielen, Wouter H. Hendriks, Paul J Moughan.

Cristobal, Minoy, Su A Lee , Carl M. Parsons, and Hans H. Stein.

Fanelli, N. S., J. C. F. R. Martins, and H. H. Stein. 2025. Protein quality of salmon protein hydrolystes using the digestible indispensable amino acid score (DIAAS) method. Current Dev. Nutr. 9:106016. doi.org/10.1016/j.cdnut.2025.106593 Link to abstract.

Acosta, J. P., S. A Lee, and H. H. Stein. 2025. Greenhouse gas emission, nitrogen balance, and ileal digestibility of amino acids and acid hydrolyzed ether extract in diets containing different inclusion rates of hybrid rye fed to growing pigs. J. Anim. Sci. 103(Suppl3), 186-187.  doi.org/10.1093/jas/skaf300.224 Link to abstract.

Excessive heat during processing can reduce the concentration and bioavailability of Lys in soybean ingredients via Maillard reactions, lowering growth performance in weanling pigs. Reactive Lys (the Lys not bound in Maillard products) is the relevant bioavailable part of Lys that can be used for protein synthesis by the animals. We tested the hypothesis that: (1) growth performance can be predicted from reactive Lys supplied by heat-damaged soybean ingredients, and (2) crystalline amino acids (AA) can be added to the diet to compensate for heat-induced losses.