ALTERNATIVE PROTEINS ▶▶▶
Carinata meal C
The meal from this exciting highly-sustainable crop is expected to make further inroads in animal feed for a wide range of reasons.
BY TREENA HEIN
arinata, also known as Ethiopian mustard, is a cousin of canola – and a true oilseed ‘wonder crop’ with the potential to take sustainability to a whole new level in several industries, including animal feed. If you
Nuseed Carinata Business Devel- opment Man- ager, Alex Clay- ton with an award Nuseed received from its customer Saipol.
haven’t yet heard much about it, let me introduce you to it. The meal, which is non-GMO, has high levels of protein, mak- ing it an attractive protein ingredient in animal feed, but es- pecially attractive in the European market which currently prohibits GMO products. Biofuel made from its oil has already been used in commercial jet flights (the oil is not suitable for human consumption due to high levels of erucic acid) and its fibre is being actively explored as a source of renewable biomass for power generation. The crop itself is hardy and fast-growing, with extremely
deep roots that make it very drought tolerant. It can be grown over winter as a cover crop, and thus does not inter- fere with growing food crops. (Actually, through the many benefits of cover crops such as erosion control that it pro- vides, carinata boosts the success of the food crops that fol- low it.) What’s more, seed loss is minimal during harvest. It’s no surprise then that there is a lot of activity designed to in- crease the carinata acreage in the US, South America, Europe and Australia. Let’s take a closer look at carinata for livestock feed. Carinata meal is so far the only protein product derived from any crop certified by the ‘Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels’ (RSB), a global group of businesses (including Agrisoma), non-gov- ernmental organisations, academics, government and United Nations organisations that supports the sustainable produc- tion of biomaterials. According to RSB member and global crop genetics company Agrisoma, “certain carinata varieties have up to 46% protein content, putting it on par with the most widely-used, best sources of protein in the feed world.” The meal has already been approved as a feed ingredient for beef cattle by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, US Food and Drug Administration and the European Food Safety Authority. With partners, Agrisoma is working to attain feed approvals for poultry, dairy, pigs and aquaculture species. In December 2019, a deal between Agrisoma and another global crop ge- netics firm called Nuseed was announced. Agrisoma’s propri- etary carinata germplasm, patents and regulatory data were sold to Nuseed and several of Agrisoma’s carinata/biofuel ex- perts were part of the agreement. Nuseed’s carinata breeding team is based in Saskatchewan, Canada. Because carinata has a ‘soft’ seed, both its oil and meal components have “great ap- plication” in livestock feed, explains Nuseed’s Carinata Busi- ness Development Manager Alex Clayton. “We have priori- tised a number of elements in our breeding to optimise the meal fraction for animal nutrition,” he reports. “Breeding for yellow-to-light-brown seed coat colour has resulted in a meal with lower fibre content and, as a result of selecting for con- sistently high protein content, Nuseed carinata generally has higher protein content than other small oil seeds.”
Research on carinata meal In 2019 in the journal Animals, a team from the University of Florida, the US Dairy Forage Research Center and the Instituto de Zootecnia in Brazil found that in ruminants, carinata meal has protein digestibility similar to soybean meal and its crude protein degrades very well in the rumen. “No negative effect
26 ▶ ALL ABOUT FEED | Volume 28, No. 10, 2020
PHOTO: NUSEED
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