Evonik expands NIR services for insect, marine species meals and cattle feed
For benchtop NIR instruments, the company has introduced new calibrations for various insect meals and marine species meals as well as for cattle feed.
When asked why there was a need for those new calibrations, Dr Ingolf Reimann, head of analytical services in the animal nutrition business line at that German company, told us
“Insect meals are playing an increasing role in the feed industry. Marine products are most relevant for the aqua feed industry. The quality of these products is highly variable due to different species and production systems which leads to significant differences in the nutrient composition. By applying AMINONIR the nutrient composition of each raw material batch can be quickly and reliably analysed and data can be used to optimize the feed.”
Weighing in on the gains for industry, Reimann said customers benefit from an efficient use of sourced raw materials, less variation in feed quality and animal performance and ultimately lower safety margins, less waste and lower costs.
The new calibrations, he said, support Black Soldier Fly (BSF), silkworm, earthworm, and mealworm derived meals.
“With our marine species calibration, shrimp meal, squid meal and krill meal can be analyzed. The cow feed calibration is suitable for energy and protein concentrates fed to beef and dairy cows. All relevant crude nutrients are covered.”
Nutritional composition of new protein sources
Will this development help shore up feed industry access to new protein sources?
“In the case of insect meal, as an upcoming feed raw material, the knowledge about the nutritional composition is essential. Without this knowledge, integration of such alternative feed raw materials would not be possible. Not knowing about the precise nutritional composition would lead to the application of high safety margins and to economic and ecological inefficiencies.”
Calibrations for raw materials such as corn, fishmeal and soybean meal have been updated as well.
“Evonik continuously monitors the performance of all AMINONIR calibrations and frequently updates them with the most current global samples from the market. This allows new processing conditions, genotypes and the latest influences of climate conditions to be included. In that way, the most robust and most suitable calibration is provided for use," said the analytical services lead.
The company has also added new functionalities such as faster first-time setup and scanning of samples, as well as integration options for barcodes and geodata in the AMINONIR Portable app. The idea, said Reimann, was to facilitate processes by reducing manual work for the user at critical process steps. "Examples for this are that we provide applications in 14 languages to choose from and add functionalities give customers the option to scan barcodes instead of typing in data and make use of geodata which reduces the need for manual recording."
