Processing of Pulses and Cereal Grains with Infrared Heat for Early Weaned Pigs

Background and Objectives: Pollution of the environment has become one of the very serious problems in the world. Factors contributing to these problems are both natural causes and man created activities. As livestock production intensifies, air, water and soil pollution becomes a problem. Utilization of feedstuffs especially by young pigs is influenced by the presence of anti-nutritional factors and fiber. An ideal thermal treatment procedure should sufficiently inactivate anti-nutritional factors and increase the bioavailability of nutrients, especially the essential amino acids. Micronizing or infra-red processing has been developed commercially for the heat treatment of bulk feeds to improve their nutritional worth. The long term goal of this proposal was to establish infra-red processing as a viable technology for increasing the value of a variety of pulses and cereals as they would become more attractive to both domestic and export markets for human and livestock use. The study was divided into two parts.