New Production Technologies Improve DDGS Quality

CANADA - Researchers with the University of Manitoba are finding new technologies for producing ethanol from grain results in higher quality co-products, writes Bruce Cochrane.
calendar icon 10 March 2009
clock icon 3 minute read

A multi-disciplinary research effort at the University of Manitoba is developing new lines of winter wheat, assessing the value of those lines in producing ethanol and evaluating the co-products for use in swine, poultry and cattle rations and in human food.

Dr. Karin Wittenberg, the associate dean of research with the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, reports distillers dried grains with solubles, the co-product of ethanol production, contains high levels of protein, fibre, minerals and vitamins and can be an excellent feed or food ingredient.

Dr. Karin Wittenberg-Dr. Karin Wittenberg

The distillers dried grains that are the co-product have fairly high protein levels, they have a fairly good amino acid profile, they have the same fibres, oils, minerals and vitamins except in a more concentrated form than in the existing grain and so they provide excellent opportunity to supplement diets for animals.

Dried distillers grains have been around forever.

Distilleries which basically all take starches, whether it's from corn or wheat or rye, to produce various alcohols have these co-products.

What's different today is that we have newer processing technologies being used in our plants, in many ways better processing technologies from the perspective of the quality of the dried distillers grains that are being produced and so we have more opportunities today to utilize these co-products in animal diets than in years gone by and we're really just trying to optimize that.


Dr. Wittenberg says researchers are finding the nutritional value of these new generation co-products are superior to what was being produced at some of the older plants in western Canada.

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