Feed & Additive Magazine Issue 3 April 2021

ARTICLE 72 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE April 2021 SHINING A LIGHT ON SOYBEAN MEAL QUALITY “Soybean meal processing impacts the quality of the material, and it is now possible for feed producers to check additional protein quality indicators that can be used as a guide to check impact of processing on soybean meal quality, including reactive lysine content and urease activity.” William Greenwood Sales and Technical Services Manager EMEA - AB Vista Jae Kim Technical Manager ASPAC AB Vista G iven current soybean meal price volatility, and environmental pressures, it is essential for feed producers to have a deep understanding of it´s nutritional composition to optimise its inclusion in the feed and compare different suppliers. Historically feed producers have focussed on de- termining the macro-nutrient content of soybean meal (e.g. moisture, protein, oil, crude fibre, ash) in order to optimise the feed formula. More recently, companies can also check more advanced nutritional parameters, like amino acids, non-starch polysaccha- ride (NSP) content and phytate-P. Soybean meal processing impacts the quality of the material, and it is now possible for feed producers to check additional protein quality indicators that can be used as a guide to check impact of processing on soybean meal quality, including reactive lysine con- tent and urease activity. Rapid analysis of these additional parameters has become available thanks to recent advancements in near-infrared reflectance (NIR) technology, which is a cost effective alternative to traditional chemical testing to check the nutritional composition of feedstuffs. SOYBEAN MEAL PRODUCTION AND THE IMPACT OF PROCESSING ON ANIMAL PERFORMANCE Soybean meal production involves different steps with a range of pressures and temperatures applied in order to extract oils, remove anti-nutrients (e.g. trypsin inhibitors) and to increase digestibility, with the most sensitive step for quality control being the desolventizing-toasting (D-T) operation (Figure 1). Detecting both undercooked and overcooked soy- bean meal is important for feed producers to dis- criminate low quality soybean meals. The American Soybean Meal Association compared the ileal digest-