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Amino Acid Digestibility in Soy

Our dry extrusion was invented to process whole soybeans, and over the years, this process has been well-researched and fine-tuned for controlled and consistent results.  The advantages of this technique are the following:

• Thorough plant cell wall rupture, providing much-improved access to nutrients
• Deactivation of naturally present antinutritional factors, which hinder animal performance.
• Improved nutrient digestibility as measured by animal studies.
• A high-temperature, short-time process that is easily controlled and does not destroy proteins
• Partial dehydration, results in less moisture content and a more concentrated form of nutrients.
• A single ingredient brings both highly digestible amino acids and a high energy content to consume a sizable portion of many formulations.

All of these are critically important; however, it is this last point that often goes unappreciated.  Keep in mind that what we’ve done here is allow all the oil to remain in the meal to provide energy for the animals.

This is powerful because this is a process that we can easily control and expect the same results every time.  This means fewer surprises when formulations include this ingredient.

Nutritionists and formulators rely on amino acid digestibility and metabolizable energy when putting diets together.  Testing dry extruded whole soybeans and commodity, solvent-extracted soybean meal against one another, you can see the differences:

The major difference shows up when looking at the metabolizable energy values. Energy is required to maximize production and is abundant in dry extruded soybeans from all of the oil remaining in the meal. Despite having only a slightly higher overall average amino acid digestibility value, the major value is seen when all the oil remains within the ingredient rather than removed in the case of a solvent-extracted meal.