Hello, everyone! I'm Jimena Ibagon, a first-year Ph.D. student, and you're tuning in to the Hans H. Stein Monogastric Nutrition Laboratory Podcast.
Today's episode is a deep dive into my recent on the Effect of Microbial Phytase on the Digestibility of Phosphorus in seven sources of sunflower co-products fed to growing pigs. This research was part of a poster presentation I shared at the Midwest Meeting of the American Society of Animal Sciences in 2023.
To give you a bit of introduction, the nutritional composition of sunflower co-products can indeed be influenced by various factors such as the location where they are grown, the degree of dehulling they undergo, and the method used for the oil extraction. These factors can impact the levels of phosphorus (P), calcium (Ca), and other nutrients present in these co-products.
Furthermore, the inclusion of microbial phytase in pig diets has been shown to enhance the digestibility of phosphorus in other oilseeds. However, it remains unclear whether the geographic region where the sunflowers are grown the technique used for oil extraction have an effect on the digestibility of phosphorus and calcium in sunflower meal co-products when these are fed to growing pigs.
Understanding these relationships could lead to optimized the feeding strategies for swine nutrition and improved utilization of sunflower co-products in pig diets.
Therefore, the objective of this experiment was to test the hypothesis that there are no differences among sources of sunflower co-products in the apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) of P and Ca and on the standardized total tract digestibility (STTD) of P regardless of where the ingredients were growing.
In this experiment, we utilized seven sources of sunflower co-products. This included six sources of sunflower meal (SFM)—two from Ukraine, two from the U.S., one from Hungary, and one from Italy and additionally, we had one source of sunflower expeller (SFE) from the U.S. Seven diets were mix, where sunflower co-products were use as the sole source of phosphorus (P). Furthermore, another set of seven diets were mix, identical to the first seven, with the exception that those diets contained 300 units per kg of microbial phytase." With that we had a total of 14 diets.
A total of 112 barrows were randomly allotted to these 14 diets and those pigs were placed in individual metabolism crates with slatted floors that allow us to for total but separate collection of urine and fecal materials.
Now lest move on to the results and I like to setting up my graphs. We have seven bars and each bar represent one the sunflower co-products and in Graph 1, we observed that the Apparent Total Tract Digestibility of phosphorus stands out that one of the sources from Ukraine and the source from Hungary show us a greater apparent digestibility compared to the sunflower expeller. And no significant differences were noted among the other sunflower meal sources.
An interesting observation was noted, and was that adding the 300 units of phytase in the diet significantly increased the apparent total tract digestibility of phosphorus across the sunflower sources. This addition seems to enhance the overall digestibility of P in all the sunflower co-products."
Moving to Figure 2, a similar narrative we observed this time around the Standardized Total Tract Digestibility (STTD) of phosphorus (P). What catch our attention is that within sunflower meal sources, no significant differences in the STTD of P were noted among its sources. However, the STTD of P in the sunflower expeller was notably lower compared to the sunflower meal co-products. Additionally, the inclusion of phytase, show us a consistent trend emerged across all sunflower co-products, this means that an increase in the STTD of phosphorus in all sunflower meal co-products was observed.
Now let’s focus in focus to Figure 3, and this graph is about the Apparent Total Tract Digestibility of calcium (Ca), and we observed that one of the sources from the United States have a higher digestibility of Ca compared to other sources like Ukraine or Hungary. However, no significant differences were evident among sunflower meal sources from the United States, Italy, or the sunflower expeller co-product, and the addition of the 300 units of phytase to these diets contributed to an increase in the digestibility of calcium across the sunflower co-products."
In conclusion, the addition of microbial phytase to pig diets containing sunflower meal (SFM) or sunflower expeller (SFE) show as a consistent outcome—an increase in the digestibility of calcium (Ca) and phosphorus (P), regardless of the type of sunflower co-product used.
The differences observed in the P digestibility among sunflower co-products within this experiment could be attributed to variation in growing conditions or differences in the processing of sunflower seeds for oil extraction.
With that, I’d like to thank you for tuning in to this episode. And if you have any questions feel free to reach out via email at jaibagon@illinois.edu or visit our website at nutrition.ansci.illinois.edu.
Until next time, and please stay curious exploring the fascinating world of animal nutrition.