Location: Plant Genetics Research
Project Number: 5070-21000-044-028-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Oct 1, 2023
End Date: Aug 31, 2024
Objective:
Trypsin inhibitor (TI) is a major anti-nutritional protein in soybean meal. Since soybean meal with high TI has a negative effect on the animal performance, it has become increasingly important for livestock feed producers to reliably measure the TI content in their feed. However, routine measurement of trypsin inhibitor is not trivial due to cumbersome steps involved in measuring TI activity using the current methods. Here, we propose to develop a simple, reliable and inexpensive procedure that can be routinely utilized by soybean processors as a standard method to measure trypsin inhibitor levels and improve the nutritive value of soybean meal.
Approach:
With United Soybean Board funding, we recently developed an easy and rapid procedure to measure trypsin inhibitor activity in soybean meal. We modified and improved the AACCI/AOCS approved method resulting in the elimination of several time-consuming steps and reducing the assay volume from 10 to 1 mL. In this proposal, we will be further refining our 1 ml assay to increase the reliability of our assay. Samples provided by the feed industry will be used for the validation of our new protocol. We believe our refined method will increase the accuracy of the assay and drastically reduce the cost of the assay. Additionally, we will examine the feasibility of measuring the trypsin inhibitor activity in 96-well microplates which will enable high-throughput screening of large number of soy meal samples.
