Concerns about the misleading conclusions regarding estimation of the net energy value of soybean meal relative to corn
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(2020) 11:113
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Open Access
Concerns about the misleading conclusions regarding estimation of the net energy value of soybean meal relative to corn using the caloric efficiency approach in pigs Shuai Zhang*† , Zhongchao Li† and Ling Liu† Abstract Apart from energy balance trials such as calorimetry, growth trials could also be used to estimate the energy values of feed ingredients with caloric efficiency as an indicator. Recent work used such methods reported greater net energy (NE) value of soybean meal (SBM) relative to corn in nursery pigs. We theoretically compared the NE values of SBM and corn according to the definition of NE and properties of the major chemical compositions in each ingredient. Meanwhile, we thoroughly examined the diet formulations and related analysis used in this work and compared this study with some peer works. We found that this study may suffer from problems with experimental design, reference citation, and data interpretation. In summary, the conclusion from the recent work that the SBM NE value may be greater than the corn NE value is likely to be erroneous. Keywords: Caloric efficiency, Corn, Net energy, Pig, Soybean meal
Main text Net energy (NE) is the ideal basis to express both energy requirements of pigs and energy values of feeds [1]. Therefore, it is necessary to accurately evaluate the NE value of common feed ingredients when formulating cost-efficient diets based on their combinations. Calorimetry is the traditional approach to determine the NE value of diets and ingredients, but it relies on specialized equipment, and is a time-consuming and laborious work. Instead, more convenient approaches such as prediction equations based on chemical components of diets and
* Correspondence: [email protected] † Shuai Zhang, Zhongchao Li and Ling Liu contributed equally to this work. State Key Laboratory of Animal Nutrition, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Feed Industry Centre, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China
ingredients can be used to estimate the NE values of feed ingredients rapidly. In the July issue of Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology, Cemin et al. [2] presented an approach of using caloric efficiency (CE) to estimate the NE value of soybean meal (SBM) relative to corn in nursery pigs. The authors reported improved CE in nursery pigs consuming diets formulated based on NE values from NRC [1] when the inclusion level of dietary SBM increased from 17.5% to 40% [2]. Therefore, Cemin et al. [2] concluded that NRC [1] underestimated the NE value of SBM, which ranges between 105% to 125% of corn energy. Although respecting the authors’ efforts, we have several concerns about data interpretation, experimental design, and the citation of related works, which might lead to misleading findings and conclusions. Specifically, we believe that the authors did not take the NE for lipid deposition into consideration when
© The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Inte
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