Introduction:


Biotechnology is used to improve live stock production by improving the live stock feed via improving nutrient content and also improved the digestibility of low quality animal feed by using efficient food additives.

Biotechnology techniques like genetic engineering are used to produce genetically modified feed ingredients in order to improve nutritional quality and production capability of animal feed.

Biotechnology is also used to improve the nutritional value of animal feed such as low protein, amino acid or deficiency of certain minerals by adding the efficient feed additives Nutritional improvement can be done mainly in two ways first by value added feed stuff or by feed additives.

Value Added Feed Stuff:

Low Phytate Corn:

Natural phosphorus which is present in plant feed are mostly present in the form of phytate phosphorus, this form of phosphorus cannot be utilized by the live stock, using biotechnology techniques low phytate phosphorus and high available natural phosphorus containing corn are produced. This type of genetically modified corn also contained more amount of crude protein and also high percentage of crude fat when compared to normal corn.

Feeding this genetically modified corn on broiler chicken improved body weight, feed conversion, better feed to egg ratio and decreased abdominal fat content and also linolenic and linolic acid content are increased in the egg yolk.

Low Oligosaccharide soybean:

The oligosaccharide Raffinoseand stachyose present in the soybean act as antinutritive factor. Genetically modified soybean with low concentration of oligosaccharide Raffinoseand stachyose produced using genetic engineering technique, improved amino acid digestibility and also increased dry matter digestibility.

Soybean with High Lysine:

Genetically modified soybean with improved content of lysine, decreased the need of supplemental addition of lysine in animal feed or diet.

Genetically Modified Crops with improved Amino Acid Profile:

Crops are genetically modified in such a way that the amino acid production is improved in these crops. Using these genetically modified crops as feed decreased the amount of nitrogen excretion in poultry.

Feed Additive:

Adding specific and efficient additives to the animal feed drastically improves the digestibility of animals and hence reduces feed cost.

Enzymes:

Enzyme are biological catalysts, they help in digesting the feed and also improves the availability of nutrition from feed stuff.

Microbial phytase enzyme produced using biotechnology is used as feed additives as these enzymes help in digesting phytic acid, which are present in cereals and oil seeds. This provides digestible phosphorus to the animal stock. This reduces the use of supplemental inorganic phosphorus like dicalcium phosphate in animal feed, and also reduced feed cost.

Dietary Amino Acid:

Genetically modified microorganisms are used to produce amino acids in large quantities like tryptophan, threonine and other amino acids. Using all these amino acids as feed additive reduces the required dietary crude protein level in the animal feed by 5%, hence reduces the feed cost.

Advantages:

1. Developing genetically modified crops with improved nutritional value, decreases the antinutritive factors such as trypsin inhibitor, high fiber content and also limitation of phosphorus content during feed formulation.
2. Less phosphorus content is excreted from the live stock hence this would help in controlling eutrophication.
3. Increases digestibility of low quality animal feed by adding additives to the feed.
4. Drastically reduces the cost of animal feed.
5. Decreases animal waste

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