The effect of enzymatic pre-treatment of corn or soybean meal on their phytate content under different in vitro conditions

BACKGROUND: Phosphorous is one of the expensive nutrients in poultry feed. Therefore, improving the bioavailability of this nutrient in feed ingredients could be effective for lowering the cost of feed. OBJECTIVE: This study was performed to evaluate the effect of pretreatment of feed ingredients by commercial enzymes and different levels of pH on releasing of phosphorus from phytate under in vitro condition. METHODS: Three solutions including Distilled water, HCl 0.5% and HCl 1% (with pH=5.5, 2.12 and 2.12 respectively) and three enzymes (None, Biophytase, Rovabio Excel AP, and Rovabio Max AP) were used to determine phytate content of corn and soybean meal. First, each sample was supplemented with the enzymes and pretreated under above mentioned solutions for 3 hours at 25 and 40 °C. RESULTS: The results indicated that pretreating of corn samples with Biophytase or Rovabio Max AP and different solutions (at 25 °C and 40 °C for 3 hours) reduced phytate content significantly. The best results obtained with corn samples supplemented with Rovabio Max AP and mixing by HCl 1% at 25°C, so that phytate content decreased up to 99.5% in comparison with control. The same results were also obtained for soybean samples. The highest reduction in phytate content (up to 47.4%) was observed by adding Rovabio Max AP and HCl 1% solution at 40°C. CONCLUSION: It could be concluded that pre-treating of corn and soybean meal with several manners such as using commercial enzymes including phytase and solutions with different pH were effective to reduce phytate content that means increasing bioavailability of phosphorous.