Rice bran is the brown outer layer of brown rice, which is removed from brown rice to produce white polished rice for human consumption. Rice bran may be full fat, containing 14 to 25% fat, or defatted, which reduces the concentration of fat to less than 5%.
Rice bran has a high concentration of non-starch polysaccharides (NSP), primarily arabinoxylan and cellulose. NSPs decrease nutrient digestibility and thus limit the inclusion of rice bran in weanling pig diets. Recent data from our laboratory indicate that adding exogenous xylanase to diets containing full fat rice bran (FFRB) or defatted rice bran (DFRB) increases the concentrations of digestible and metabolizable energy. The objective of this experiment was to determine the effects of increased inclusion levels of FFRB or DFRB to diets without or with exogenous xylanase on growth performance.