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.

Espinosa, Charmaine D., John K. Mathai, Laia Blavi, Yanhong Liu, John K. Htoo, J. Caroline Gonzalez-Vega, and Hans H. Stein. 2021. Effects of supplemental d-methionine in comparison to l-methionine on nitrogen retention, gut morphology, antioxidant status, and mRNA abundance of amino acid transporters in weanling pigs. Journal of Animal Science, 2021, Vol. 99, No. 9, 1–10. doi.org/10.1093/jas/skab248.

Lee, Su A and H. H. Stein. 2021. Ca and P digestibility values aren’t accurate for formulating sow diets. Pork Magazine, On-line edition, Sep. 9, 2021. Link to full text.

Espinosa, C. D., N. S. Fanelli, H. H. Stein. 2021. Digestibility of amino acids and concentration of metabolizable energy are greater in high-oil corn than in conventional corn when fed to growing pigs. Animal Feed Science and Technology 280: 115040. doi.org/10.1016/j.anifeedsci.2021.115040. Link to full text.

Ibagon, Jimena A., Su A Lee, and Hans H. Stein. 2021. Sunflower expellers have greater ileal digestibility of amino acids than sunflower meal, but there are only minor variations among different sources of sunflower meal when fed to growing pigs. Journal of Animal Science, 2021, Vol. 99, No.

Espinosa, Charmaine D., Maryane S. F. Oliveira, Deepak E. Velayudhan, Yueming Dersjant-Li, Hans H. Stein. 2021. Influence of a novel consensus bacterial 6-phytase variant on mineral digestibility and bone ash in young growing pigs fed diets with different concentrations of phytate-bound phosphorus. Journal of Animal Science, 2021, Vol. 99, No. 8, 1–12. doi.org/10.1093/jas/skab211.

Lagos, L. Vanessa, Su A Lee, Mike R. Bedford, and Hans H. Stein. 2021. Reduced concentrations of limestone and monocalcium phosphate in diets without or with microbial phytase did not influence gastric pH, fecal score, or growth performance, but reduced bone ash and serum albumin in weanling pigs. Transl. Anim. Sci. 2021.5:1-10. doi.org/10.1093/tas/txab115.

Corn coproducts produced from the fuel ethanol or the wet milling industries may be used in diets fed to pigs. Newly developed corn proteins are high protein feed ingredients with approximately 40 to 50% crude protein (CP), and corn protein may be a great source of digestible amino acids (AA) in diets fed to weanling pigs. There are, however, limited data on the digestibility of AA in different sources of corn protein fed to weanling pigs. Therefore, the objective of this experiment was to test the null hypothesis that there is no difference in the standardized ileal digestibility (SID) of AA in 3 different sources of corn protein when fed to weanling pigs.

Acosta, Jessica P., Charmaine D. Espinosa, Neil W. Jaworski, and Hans H. Stein. 2021. Corn protein has greater concentrations of digestible amino acids and energy than low-oil corn distillers dried grains with solubles when fed to pigs but does not affect the growth performance of weanling pigs. Journal of Animal Science, 2021, Vol. 99, No. 7, 1–12. doi:10.1093/jas/skab175.