Dr Schillinger inspects soybean cultivars

For the past decade, Dr Schillinger has specialised in creating high-protein soybeans with low anti-nutritional factors, tailored for specific feed uses.

Dr Schillinger has devoted over 40 years of his distinguished career to working with soybean genetics. His research programmes have emphasised the function of various compositional factors of soybeans and their impact on nutritive value in feed and food.

His developments of soybean varieties for the food industry in United States, Japan and Korea are well recognised. Currently, four of Schillinger Genetics’ food-grade varieties (240.RY, 389.FYC, 3520.FHPC and 448.FHPC) are among the most popular varieties for tofu, soy milk, soy snack and miscellaneous production. All of these varieties were selected for high protein content.

For the past 10 years, John Schillinger and his team at Schillinger genetics have turned their attention to animal and aquatic feed use. In 2007, Dr Schillinger and his team began supporting feeding trials with swine, poultry and turkeys followed by aquaculture feeding trials with trout, salmon and shrimp – all with great success.

Thanks to Dr Schillinger, novel soybean varieties are now commercially available with oligosaccharide levels (stachyose and raffinose, oligos) significantly reduced from a normal value of 5.5 per cent to 0.5 per cent.

Similarly, unique soybean cultivars have been developed which significantly reduce trypsin inhibitors from 55,000TIU/g present in regular commodity beans to a low of 7,000TIU/g.

From a practical perspective, the value-added advantage in using these improved soybean varieties is highlighted by savings in processing costs since there is no need for heat-deactivation of protease inhibitors, improvement of nutritive value as there is no nutrient deterioration and the elimination of potentially detrimental effects of excessive oligosaccharide concentrations.

For the growing aquafeed market, soybean cultivars have been selected with 15 to 20 per cent higher protein content and with the difficult-to-digest carbohydrates, raffinose and stachyose, as well as trypsin inhibitors significantly reduced.

The defatted meal derived from these cultivars exceeds 56 per cent in protein content and with further gentle processing will surpass 60 per cent in crude protein (CP). Feeding trials comparing protein digestibility, metabolisable energy, mortality, FCR and growth performance have been conducted with Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, Pacific white shrimp, European sea bass, cobia, yellowtail and red drum. Additional trials with other aquaculture species will be conducted in 2012.

Dr Schillinger’s team will describe how redesigned soybean varieties are opening up opportunities for animal and aquafeed manufacturers at the feed conferences FIAAP Asia Conference and Aquafeed Horizons, taking place 15 and 16 February 2012, during Victam Asia 2012 in Bangkok.

For more information about these meetings, click here.