USSEC Southeast Asia recently organized a seminar, “Amino Acid and Energy in Soybean Meal Used in Poultry and Livestock: A Model for Aquaculture Nutrition,” which aimed to provide Vietnamese aqua feedmills with knowledge and research data on U.S. Soy products, while emphasizing the differentiation of U.S. Soy products by amino acid profile and metabolizable energy content.
The one-day seminar was held on April 8 in Ho Chi Minh City at the Saigon Sheraton Hotel. The conference was attended by about 20 aqua feed producers and feedmillers, mainly from South Vietnam. USSEC Vietnam Country Manager Tran Trong Chien and USSEC Vietnam Aquaculture Technical Managers Vo Hoang Nguyen and Dr Nguyen Van Tien were also in attendance.

Dr. Basilisa P. Reas, USSEC technical expert in monogastric and swine nutrition, shared a paper highlighting the higher metabolizable energy (ME) and digestible essential amino acid (DEAA) content of U.S. dehulled soybean meal compared with meal of other origin, as demonstrated by bioassay results from Massey University.
Using livestock and poultry nutrition as a basis for discussing aquaculture nutrition, Dr. Reas highlighted that the ME:DEAA ratio is a more accurate way of assessing the energy-to-protein ratio and, hence, the quality of feed ingredients. This would also provide more reliable assessments of feed cost per kilogram, and a better estimate of how feed quality affects the bottom-line. Dr. Reas also shared that full-fat soybean meal is a good source of phospholipids (lecithin) which increases the energy digestibility of high fat diets which is common in most aqua feeds.
Scientifically designed feeding trials or bioassays in aqua species should generate similar ME:DEAA data that would more accurately reflect the utilizable energy-to-protein ratio, an area of research in which USSEC could contribute pioneering efforts. The seminar further analyzed the superior economic returns from using U.S. Soy products, by comparing the energy and amino acid profiles of soy products of various originations.