Canola meal is the second most used plant protein source, after soybean meal, in livestock diets. The production of canola meal involves a step in which the meal is treated with steam for 35 to 50 minutes at temperatures from 95 to 115°C. The application of heat and moisture to feedstuffs results in the Maillard reaction, which reduces the concentration and digestibility of amino acids. Lysine is particularly susceptible to the Maillard reaction, so it is important to determine accurate digestible lysine levels in feedstuffs that may be heat damaged. Amino acid analysis that does not account for lysine recovered from acid hydrolysis of Maillard products may overestimate the amount of digestible lysine in a sample. Therefore, methods other than simple lysine analysis must be used when assessing feed that may be heat damaged.
An experiment was conducted to determine the effects of heat damage on the digestibility of crude protein and amino acids in canola meal fed to growing pigs. Another objective of the experiment was to develop regression equations to predict the concentration of standardized ileal digestible (SID) amino acids in canola meal.