Using Supplemental Enzymes To Improve The

In soybean-based animal feeds, the two galacto-oligosaccharide (raffinose and stachyose) present majorobstacles in accessing the full nutritive value of the soybean meal portion of the diet by chickens andturkeys. The problem is caused by the inability of these animals to hydrolyze raffinose and stachyoseinto galactose and fructose using endogenous digestive enzymes. Consequently, soybean meal has alower metabolizable energy than would be expected based on a standard proximate analysis. With thecurrent emphasis on plant genetic engineering to develop high energy grain, and a trend towards agreater reliance on plant-based nutrition due to concerns over Bovine Spongioform Encephalitis (BSE),improving the total nutritional value of soybean is an important target from an animal productionperspective. To date, there are few examples of the use of supplemental enzymes for soybean-baseddiets. The proposed research program would initially be focused on optimizing the use of an?-galactosidase to enhance the nutritive value of soybean in turkeys. In parallel, a biochemical assaywill be developed to quantify the effect of an ?-galactosidase on the release of sucrose from raffinoseand stachyose in vitro and establish a close correlation between in vitro assay results and in vivo animaltrials.