Hello everyone, my name is Vanessa Lagos. I am a second year PhD student in the Stein
Monogastric Nutrition Laboratory, and today I will share data from one of the experiments
we conducted in our lab. The title for this presentation is “Digestible and metabolizable
energy in soybean meal sourced from different countries and fed to pigs.”

To give a background about soybean production, in the 2018-2019 crop year, around 363
million tonnes of soybean were produced in the world. The most prominent producers were
United States, Brazil, Argentina, China, and India, where 89 percent of the world's
soybean production is concentrated. Approximately 88% of all soybeans were crushed to
produce oil and soybean meal.

Soybean meal is the premier source of amino acids for both pigs and poultry. And besides
protein, it also provides energy to the diet. However, the quality of soybean meal is
dependent on different factors—such as soil type, weather conditions, crushing
methodologies, and storage conditions—that may change the amount of energy and nutrients
that pigs can obtain from soybean meal. Therefore, the origin of soybean meal plays an
important role in the nutritional value of the ingredient and needs to be taken into
account for diet formulation.

Indeed, data demonstrated that the standardized ileal digestibility of crude protein and
amino acids is dependent on the region of soybean meal when fed to pigs. Likewise, a
greater concentration of metabolizable energy in soybean meal from the US compared to
soybean meal from South America or India was observed when fed to broilers. But it is
still unknown if there are differences in the concentration of digestible energy or
metabolizable energy in soybean meal from different countries fed to pigs.

Therefore, the objective of this experiment was to test the hypothesis that the
concentration of digestible energy and metabolizable energy in soybean meal is dependent
on the country in which the soybean meal was produced.

Moving into the materials and methods, 23 soybean sources from the leading soybean
producer countries were collected: five sources from the United States, specifically South
Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio; four sources from Brazil; five sources from
Argentina; five sources from China; and four sources from India.

Twenty-three diets with soybean meal as the sole source of amino acids and one
nitrogen-free diet were formulated. Twenty-four pigs with an average body weight of 25
kilograms were individually allocated in metabolism crates and allotted to 24 diets and
seven periods of seven days. And in each period, feces and urine samples were separately
collected.

Now, let's move into the results for chemical characteristics of soybean meal and energy
digestibility among countries.

Starting with the chemical characteristics of soybean meal, we have the concentration of
gross energy. But first, I would like to set up this slide. From now on, the blue bar
represents soybean meal from Argentina, the green bar represents soybean meal from Brazil,
the brown bar represents soybean meal from China, the yellow bar represents soybean meal
from India, and the red bar represents soybean meal from the US. Here we can observe that
there is a tendency for soybean meal from Brazil to have greater concentration of gross
energy than soybean meal from China, India, or the US. For the concentration of crude
protein, soybean meal from Brazil and India have greater concentration than soybean meal
from Argentina, China, and the US, and this was unexpected because it had been reported
that crude protein is reduced by high temperature and water stress. Finally, for the
concentration of acid hydrolyzed ether extract, there were no differences among countries.

Now, let's take a look at the results for carbohydrates, which are mostly affected by soil
type, fertilization, and climate conditions. For sucrose, there was a greater
concentration in soybean meal from Argentina, China, and the US than in soybean meal from
Brazil or India, and this is likely because there is more sucrose in soybean meal that is
grown in colder weather. For the stachyose, soybean meal from the US presented the
greatest concentration among countries.

Now looking at the concentration of raffinose, which is considered an anti-nutritional
factor in young pigs, the concentration was greater in soybean meal from India than in the
other four countries. For trypsin inhibitor units, the concentration was again greater in
soybean meal from India than in soybean meal from Argentina, China, and the US. And I
would like to point out here that the concentration of trypsin inhibitor units is a result
of the degree of heat processing applied to soybean meal in the crushing plant.

For the concentration of fiber, we can observe that the concentration of acid detergent
fiber was greater in soybean meal from India and China than in soybean meal from Argentina
and the US. However, we observed that numerically, soybean meal from India has greater
concentration than the other four countries. For neutral detergent fiber or NDF, there was
a tendency for Indian soybean meal to have greater concentration than Argentinian soybean
meal or soybean meal from the United States. But again, numerically, soybean meal from
India had the greatest concentration among countries.

As we all may know, ADF and NDF are not always the best methods to analyze fiber in
ingredients. Therefore, we also analyzed for the concentration of total dietary fiber or
TDF, which is divided in insoluble dietary fiber (IDF) and soluble dietary fiber (SDF). In
this slide, blue bars represent the concentration of insoluble dietary fiber in soybean
meal from the five different countries. Here we observed that there were no differences
among countries. However, Indian soybean meal had numerically greater concentration than
soybean meal from Argentina, Brazil, China, or the US. For the concentration of soluble
dietary fiber, again no differences were observed among countries; however, soybean meal
from the US had the greatest concentration among all countries.

Here, we can observe that Argentinian and Chinese soybean meal have greater apparent total
tract digestibility of gross energy than soybean meal from Brazil or India.

In terms of the concentration of digestible energy on a dry matter basis, we observed that
soybean meal from India had the lowest concentration among countries. And I would like you
to notice that although there were no differences in the digestibility of gross energy
between soybean meal from Argentina and China, numerically, soybean meal from China had
lower concentration of gross energy than soybean meal from Argentina.

Now, looking at the concentration of metabolizable energy on a dry matter basis, we
observed that soybean meal from India had the lowest concentration among countries, but
there were no differences among soybean meal from Argentina, Brazil, China, or the US.
This indicates that there is a limited effect of chemical composition of soybean meal on
the concentration of metabolizable energy.

Now let's look at the results within countries. This means we compared the four or five
sources of soybean meal in each country to evaluate if there is variability within each
country.

And before starting, I want to mention that there were no differences in the digestibility
of gross energy in any of the countries, but because of differences in the concentration
of gross energy in soybean meal, some differences were observed in the concentration of
digestible energy and metabolizable energy. So let's start with Argentina. For both the
concentration of digestible energy and metabolizable energy, there were no differences
among the four sources of soybean that were used.

For Brazil, where four sources of soybean meal were collected, there were no differences
for the concentration of digestible energy among sources. However, for the concentration
of metabolizable energy, there was a tendency for source three to have lower concentration
than source four.

For the Chinese soybean meal, there were no differences in the concentration of digestible
energy among the five sources that were collected. But for the concentration of
metabolizable energy, source one had lower concentration than sources two, three, four, or
five.

From India, four sources were collected, and for both digestible energy and metabolizable
energy, differences were observed. For digestible energy, source four had greater
concentration that sources one, two, and three, and for the concentration of metabolizable
energy, source four had greater concentration than sources one and three.

Finally, looking at the five sources of soybean meal from the US, no differences were
observed for the concentration of digestible energy or metabolizable energy among sources.

So in conclusion, the sources of soybean meal from Brazil used in this experiment tended
to have greater concentration of gross energy than soybean meal from China, India, and the
US. We also observed a greater concentration of raffinose, trypsin inhibitor units, and
fiber, and likely therefore a lower concentration of digestible energy and metabolizable
energy, in the four sources of soybean meal that we collected from India and used in this
experiment. However, based on the results from this experiment, the chemical composition
of soybean meal has limited impact on the energy value of soybean meal when fed to pigs.
And in this experiment, there was less variability in soybean meal sources from Argentina,
the US, and Brazil than in soybean meal from India and China.

Now I would like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the Indiana Soybean Alliance and
the US Soybean Export Council for the financial support, 

and all the members from the Stein Monogastric Nutrition Laboratory. And if you want to
learn more about this or more research, please visit nutrition.ansci.illinois.edu. Thank
you for listening.