Microalgae as a substitute for soya bean meal in the grass silage based dairy cow diets

Microalgae as a substitute for soya bean meal in

dairy cow dietsMarjukka Lamminen, PhD student, University of Helsinki

[email protected]: @LaMarjukka

Co-authors: Anni Halmemies-Beauchet-Filleau, Tuomo Kokkonen, Seija Jaakkola, Aila Vanhatalo

ISEP 2016, Krakow, Poland

Photo credit: Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn / Flickr

FACULTY OF AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRYDEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES

New feed resources are needed

2Marjukka Lamminen [email protected]

• Increased sustainability of livestock production: • Reducing food-feed competition between humans and livestock is necessary

(Schader et al., 2015) Decreased environmental footprint Meeting the future food demand

• Microalgae have potential to reduce food-feed competition for land• Grow extremely rapidly

• Double their biomass within <24 hours (Chisti, 2007)• Harvesting cycle of 1-10 days (Schenk et al., 2008)

• Protein content up to 700 g/kg DM (Becker, 2013)

• 5-20 x higher protein yields than rapeseed on NW-Europe (van Krimpen et al., 2013)

Microalgae as a protein feed for dairy cows


• Majority of microalgal studies have focused on rumen & milk FA profiles, and used algae supplements with high fat content

• Less is known about the protein value of microalgae for ruminants

• Lodge-Ivey et al., 2014:• In vitro comparison of soya bean meal, Nannochloropsis spp. and Chlorella

spp. either on forage or concentrate based diet

• Varying results: basal diet, microalgae species and subspecies, and growing & cultivation conditions all affect in vitro fermentation pattern of microalgae diets

• In many cases, microalgae diets resulted in lower NH3-N concentration and N degradation than soya bean meal

4

Materials & methods

Photo credit: Texas A&M AgriLife / Flickr

Marjukka Lamminen [email protected]

Experimental design

5

• 4 multiparous Finnish Ayrshire cows• On average 112 days in milk

• 4 x 4 Latin square• 21 d experimental periods

• Grass silage ad libitum and concentrates 12.5 kg/d

• Treatments• Cereal-sugar beet pulp supplemented with:

• Soya bean meal (1.6 kg/d)• Spirulina platensis (1.2 kg/d)• Chlorella vulgaris (1.4 kg/d)• Chlorella vulgaris + Nannochloropsis gaditana (0.85 + 0.85 kg/d)

Isonitrogenous


All microalgae were intact

(non-lipid extracted)

Feed analyses & animal measurementsin this presentation


• Feed composition and intake• Milk production and milk composition• Utilisation of nutrients

• Apparent digestibility (AIA)• Plasma energy metabolites• Nitrogen utilisation

• Plasma amino acids• Microbial N production• N utilisation in milk, and excretion in faeces and urine

Statistical analyses

• Analysis of variance (SAS mixed procedure)

• Contrasts:• Microalgae vs. soya bean meal• Spirulina vs. chlorella, and chlorella + nannochloropsis• Chlorella vs. chlorella + nannochloropsis

NOTE: In this experiment, the initial number of animals was only 4, and in addition, there were 2 missing observations, one in spirulina and one in chlorella. This resulted in large standard errors and lowered statistical power, and affected the final conclusions of this experiment.

Marjukka Lamminen [email protected] 7

8

Results

Photo credit: Marjukka Lamminen


Composition of feeds


Grass silage

Cereal-sugar beet

pulp

Soya bean meal

Spirulina Chlorella Nanno-chloropsis

Dry matter, g/kg 272 900 878 947 948 962

Ash, g/kg DM 81 36 76 72 51 158

NDF, g/kg DM 503 362 145 0 0 77

Crude fat, g/kg DM - 46 11 51 123 192

Crude protein, g/kg DM 135 124 439 693 588 385

Histidine, g/kg CP 16 22 27 18 18 18

Silage: 2nd cut grass silage, preserved with formic acid based additive

pH 4.2, good fermentation quality, in vitro digestible OM 655 g/kg DM

Differences in quality, but not in quantity of DM intake


• Substitution of SBM with microalgae – Increased silage intake (P<0.05) by

+1.6 kg DM/d– Decreased proportion of

concentrate in the diet (P=0.054)Total DM intake was not affected

• Palatability problems with nannochloropsis– Silage intake was increased

compared to chlorella (P<0.05)– Large variation between animals– C20-polyunsaturated FA

Soya bean meal

Spirulina Chlorella Chlorella + Nanno

0

5

10

15

20

25

10.612.9 10.9 12.8

10.99.1

10.08.8

DM intake, kg/d

Concentrate

Silage

Only slight differences in diet CP concentration, no differences were observed in N intake


Soya bean meal

Spirulina Chlorella Chlorella+Nanno

120

130

140

150

160154 153 154

150

Diet CP concentration, g/kg DM

Soya bean meal

Spirulina Chlorella Chlorella+ Nanno

300

400

500

600

530 539516 517

N intake, g/d

Inclusion of nannochloropsis in the diet tended to decrease diet CP concentration (P<0.10) compared to chlorella diet

No significant effects on milk yield, but milk fat content was increased by microalgae supplementation


• Substitution of SBM with microalgae increased milk fat content (P<0.10)• Higher milk fat content & yield on spirulina compared to 2 chlorella diets

(P<0.05)↔ Corresponding changes in plasma acetic acid concentrations

Soya bean meal

Spirulina Chlorella Chlorella +

Nanno

20

22

24

26

28

30

32

34

36

29.732.1

29.930.8

29.3

33.9

30.030.5

Milk yield, kg/d

MilkECM

Soya bean meal


1000

1100

1200

1300

1400

1500

1600

4.00

4.20

4.40

4.60

4.80

5.00

1,215

1,484

1,2611,287

4.1

4.5

4.14.2

Milk fat content (%) and yield (g/d)

Microalgae supplementation or different microalgae species had no effect on nitrogen utilisation

• Treatments had no effect on milk urea-N concentration, milk protein content or yield (P>0.10)

• Optimal level of degradable N and energy supply in the diet at milk urea-N level of 11.7 mg/dl (Nousiainen et al., 2004)– Low silage digestible OM & CP content of the diets

• Treatments had no effect on nitrogen utilisation in milk production (P>0.10)– On average 0.30 at all treatments

• Relatively low CP content of diets

13Soya bean meal


0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

11.29.34

11.3 10.3

Milk urea-N, mg/dlOptimum at 11.7 mg/dl

Soya bean meal


500600700800900

10001100

9521043

957 969

Milk protein yield, g/d

Microalgae supplementation or different microalgae species had no major effects on plasma amino acid profile of animals

• No effect on arterial histidine or carnosine concentrations (P>0.10)

– Histidine is the 1st AA limiting milk production on grass silage based diets (Vanhatalo et al., 1999)

– Carnosine is an endogenic histidine source from skeletal muscle (Boldyrev et al., 2012)

• Overall, relatively high arterial histidine concentrations on all treatments

14

Soya bean meal


010203040506070 63.4

52.356.9

45.5

Arterial histidine, µmol/l

Soya bean meal


10

15

20

25

30

23.2 24.322.8 22.4

Arterial carnosine, µmol/l

Mammary uptake of histidine was not affected bymicroalgae supplementation or different microalgae species


Soya bean meal Spirulina Chlorella Chlorella + Nanno

100

140

180

220

195 197 195 193

Mammary uptake of histidine, mmol/d

Conclusions

• Replacing soya bean meal with microalgae maintained animal performance– Despite the reduced concentrate DM intake of microalgae diets– Poor palatability of microalgae (especially nannochloropsis) might lower

feed intake on individual animals• C20-polyunsaturated FA

• No statistically significant differences were found in milk production between different microalgae species– Numerically, spirulina resulted highest milk and ECM yield– Large variation, 2 missing observations

• Nitrogen utilization in milk production was not affected by feed protein source– Low(ish) CP content of the diets


THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!

Photo credit: Marjukka Lamminen

Contact:Marjukka Lamminen, PhD student, University of Helsinki

[email protected]

Twitter: @LaMarjukka

http://blogs.helsinki.fi/melammin/eng/

References

• Becker, E.W., 2013. Microalgae for human and animal nutrition, in: Richmond, A., Hu, Q. (Eds.), Handbook of microalgal culture: applied phycology and biotechnology, second ed. Wiley-Blackwell, Chicester, United Kingdom, pp. 461-503.

• Boldyrev, A.A., Aldini, G., Derave, W., 2012. Physiology and pathophysiology of carnosine. Physiol. Rev. 93, 1803-1845.

• Chisti, Y., 2007. Biodiesel from microalgae. Biotechnology Advances 25, 294-306.• Lodge-Ivey, S.L., Tracey, L.N., Salazar, A.,2014. The utility of lipid extracted algae as a protein source in forage or

starch-based ruminant diets. J. Anim. Sci. 92, 1331-1342.• Nousiainen, J., Shingfield, K.J., Huhtanen, P., 2004. Evaluation of milk urea nitrogen as a diagnostic of protein

feeding. J. Dairy Sci. 87, 386-398.• Schader, C., Muller, A., Scialabba, N.E.-H., Hecht, J., Isensee, A., Erb, K.-H., Smith, P., Makkar, H.P.S., Klocke, P.,

Leiber, F., Schwegler, P., Stolze, M., Niggli, U.,2015. Impacts of feeding less food-competing feedstuffs to livestock on global food system sustainability. J. R. Soc. Interface 12, 20150891.

• Schenk, P.M., Thomas-Hall, S.R., Stephens, E., Marx, U.C., Mussgnug, J.H., Posten, C., Kruse, O., Hankamer, B.,2008. Second generation biofuels: High-efficiency microalgae for biodiesel production. Bioenerg. Res. 1, 20-43.

• Vanhatalo, A., Huhtanen, P., Toivonen, V. & Varvikko, T. 1999. Response of dairy cows fed grass silage diets to abomasal infusions of histidine alone or in combinations with methionine and lysine. J. Dairy Sci. 82, 2674–2685.

• van Krimpen, M.M., Bikker, P., van der Meer, I.M., van der Peet-Schwering, C.M.C., Vereijken, J.M., 2013. Cultivation, processing and nutritional aspects for pigs and poultry of European protein sources as alternatives for imported soybean products. Livestock Research, Wageningen UR, Report 662.


Presentations & Public Speaking

Microalgae as a substitute for soya bean meal in the grass silage based dairy cow diets