Additivity and associative effects of metabolizable energy and amino acid digestibility in barley and canola meal for White Pekin ducks.

An experiment was conducted using the TMEn bioassay method to investigate the additivity and associative effects of metabolizable energy and amino acid digestibility in barley and canola meal for White Pekin ducks. Additivity was tested by comparing the difference between observed values determined in a complete diet and predicted values from measurements determined with individual ingredients (barley and canola meal). Six ducks each were assigned to diets of barley, canola meal, the complete diet, and dextrose. Dextrose-fed ducks were used for estimation of endogenous losses for calculation of true amino acid digestibility. The observed AME, TME, AMEn, and TMEn values in the complete diet were 0.065, 0.083, 0.016, and 0.023 (kcal/g), respectively, numerically higher than predicted values. Differences between observed and predicted values were not significant (P > 0.05), indicating that the AME, AMEn, TME, and TMEn in barley and canola meal were all additive. In general, observed values for apparent amino acid digestibility (AAAD) and true amino acid digestibility (TAAD) in the complete diet were higher than those predicted from individual ingredients. Observed AAAD for lysine, histidine, tryptophan, alanine, and aspartate were higher (P < 0.05) than predicted values, indicating that digestibilities of these amino acids were not additive. The mean of AAAD in canola meal (77.29%) was higher (P < 0.05) than the observed values of barley (52.2%) and complete diet (64.55%). For TAAD values, differences between observed and predicted values were significant for lysine, histidine, and tryptophan (P < 0.05). The mean of TAAD in canola meal, barley, and complete diet were 85.88, 80.87, and 81.33%, respectively. The average difference between observed and predicted values for TAAD (1.18 %) was smaller than that of AAAD (5.41%). These results indicated that ME values for barley and canola meal were additive in the complete diet but that digestibilities of some amino acids were not additive; they further suggested that there were some associative effects of amino acids in barley and canola meal for ducks.