Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan are working on improving
prairie-grown feed crops to make them more valuable in world markets.
Murray Drew, from the department of animal and poultry science, told a
seminar at Canadian Western Agribition that most feeds are based on
ingredients grown in the United States.
“This is a corn-soy world,” he said. “How can we compete with Iowa?”
One answer lies in developing better feed varieties.
For example, cattle would more easily digest high-fat, low-lignin oats.
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Drew said researchers must also develop processing methods that will
improve the nutritional value of crops like flax. That would offer more
benefits in the long term.
Saskatchewan controls 40 percent of the international trade in flax, he
said.
Using it as a replacement for fish meal in salmon feed could boost that
even more.
Fish meal and oil are in short supply and are predicted to become more
scarce because of El Nino’s effects on the fish population. Together,
those two ingredients make up about 64 percent of aquaculture feed.
“They’re using more fish meal from garbage fish than they’re producing
in salmon,” Drew said.
Flax contains the omega-3 fatty acids that salmon and trout require.
But it also contains some things that fish don’t like, such as mucilage
or soluble fibre.
These are found mainly in the hull and can be removed through hot water
extraction, but Drew said researchers don’t want to add water to the
flax.
“As long as we heat treat the flax, we can destroy these compounds,” he
said.
Extrusion is one way to use heat.
Oleet Processing at Regina uses this process to combine flax and peas
to produce its feed, LinPro.
Drew said this product would need further processing to make it work
for fish. He said another 18 months of feeding trials at a fish farm
near Calgary could lead to commercial flax de-hulling and a value-added
product.
