Journal of Animal Science, Vol 75, Issue 12 3187-3194, Copyright © 1997 by American Society of Animal Science

JOURNAL ARTICLE

Nutritional evaluation of biologically treated white kidney beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) in pigs: ileal and amino acid digestibility

H. Schulze, F. H. Savelkoul, M. W. Verstegen, A. F. van der Poel, S. Tamminga and S. Groot Nibbelink
Wageningen Institute of Animal Science, Animal Nutrition Group, Agricultural University, The Netherlands.

We studied the effect of feeding young growing pigs a semisynthetic diet containing 7.5% white kidney beans-germinated (GB), pancreatin treated (PTB), or untreated (raw beans RB)--on protein and amino acid (AA) digestibilities at the terminal ileum. Eleven castrated male pigs (12.2 kg live weight) fitted with a post-valve T-cecal cannula and two blood catheters were used. The 15N-isotope dilution method was used to determine the amount of endogenous protein passing the terminal ileum and the true ileal protein digestibility. Ileal crude protein losses in pigs fed the RB, GB, and PTB diets were 51.9, 27.4, and 51.1 g/kg of DMI, respectively. The total amounts of AA passing the terminal ileum of the pigs fed the RB, GB, and PTB diets were 48.6, 21.4, and 42.2 g/kg DMI, respectively. The apparent ileal crude protein and AA digestibilities of the RB, GB, and PTB diets were 74, 87, and 75% and 76, 89, and 78%, respectively. True ileal protein digestibilities were 88, 93, and 93% for the RB, GB, and PTB diets, respectively. On the basis of this research, germination of white kidney beans improves the digestion of protein by decreasing the content of bean antinutritional factors and increasing the bean true ileal protein digestibility.