Enhancing feed quality for greater success: AB Neo’s new lab transforms piglet nutrition

Dr Mai Anh Ton Nu, the project leader, explains the lab's purpose and vision: 
“There are several immediate and important challenges our industry faces: optimising piglet nutrition for better performance and health, while preventing looseness, adapting to the ban on high-dose medicated zinc oxide in the EU and UK, and finding ways to reduce the carbon footprint in pig production. Addressing these issues requires a comprehensive approach to piglet gut health and feed efficiency, which is essential for all markets.

“Research so far has shown that protein quality and fibre profiles of feed ingredients are the prerequisites to maintaining good gut health in weaned piglets. It is therefore crucial that we quickly advance our knowledge on nutritive values of feed ingredients and create robust matrix values which will enable us to explore alternative ingredients, including locally sourced and industrial co-products, so that we can continue to improve piglet performance, while reducing environmental impacts.”

By the end of 2025, the laboratory will have:

• Completed a new matrix value of protein quality based on protein digestion kinetics using an in vitro simulation method
• Built a broad database of protein quality values of feed ingredients and diets for weaned piglets
• Developed an NIR (Near-Infrared Spectroscopy) calibration of protein quality values for locally sourced feed ingredients

A leap forward in piglet nutrition science

One of the early, exciting projects is already generating data based on protein digestion kinetics (fast protein, slow protein and resistant protein), to provide quantitative insights into how these influence a weaned piglet’s gut health and performance.

Understanding how the body uses protein and amino acids – whether for growth, energy or microbiota fermentation – can help to mitigate issues like diarrhoea linked to microbial fermentation. The use of this data will be critical in developing effective nutritional strategies that enhance gut health and performance across diverse global markets.

Dr Ton Nu continued:
“Our protein quality evaluation work will enable us to closely match an ingredient’s potential to the piglets’ requirements. While our current formulation programme already takes this into account to some extent, this new data will provide unparalleled insights into nutrient digestion properties through the concept of digestion and fermentation kinetics, which we will ultimately also expand to include starch and fibre.”

Sustainable pig production

The laboratory is also developing tools that will help to significantly improve survivability of weaned piglets, while reducing the use of therapeutic antimicrobials.

Insights from the evaluation of carbohydrate fractions, particularly the fermentation kinetics of dietary fibre in common feed ingredients, local ingredients and co-products, will be applied to develop new screening tools to assess gastrointestinal properties of feed ingredients. This is essential for sourcing local and responsible feedstuffs that will be scientifically modelled to optimise performance and stimulate gut health while having low environmental impact.

“Dietary fibre plays a crucial role in gut health, immune function, animal performance, and welfare. However, its role is often underappreciated in feed formulation,” Dr Ton Nu explains. “Determining the optimal levels and ratios of new fibre classifications is crucial for improving piglets’ gut health and reducing post-weaning diarrhoea, supporting better health outcomes and performance across different production systems.”

Fast-tracking ingredient evaluation

Our continued commitment to scientific research places us firmly at the forefront of neonate nutrition. Alongside our Centre of Excellence, this fast-track evaluation of local feed ingredients and diets, which can be fully measured in a commercial pig production research facility, has the potential to significantly advance neonate nutrition.

AB Neo Managing Director, Heidi Burrows, concludes:
“I am incredibly proud of the team for their tenacity and expertise in exploring better ways to improve piglet health through enhanced feeding strategies. While this new laboratory gives us flexibility and capability in-house to offer unique services to our customers, the milestones in science that they have set themselves are incredible for the industry as a whole.  It’s a very exciting next phase that will give us a market leading understanding of nutrient digestion and fermentation, enabling us to positively influence piglet health and production, benefiting animals, our customers and the environment.”
 

For more information, please contact:

Dr Mai Anh Ton Nu
R&D Scientist at AB Neo
+45 22 11 48 53

Media contact:

Yulia Levandovska
Global Head of Marketing at AB Neo
+48 506 399 650

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