Features Animal Health
Can canola meal do more?

Like many researchers in Canada and around the world, Doug Korver is exploring effective, practical alternatives to antibiotics in poultry production. His team at the University of Alberta are getting ready to feed fermented canola meal to broilers to validate the probiotic properties of this altered feed ingredient. 

 A professor in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences, Korver is part of a multidisciplinary team looking at antibiotic alternative, led by University of Guelph’s Shayan Sharif. Working with food microbiologist Dr. Michael Gaenzle, Korver and graduate student Vi Pham are heading into the final testing stage of fermented canola meal as a probiotic feed additive. “If we can work with something already in poultry diets that has a probiotic effect and brings other health benefits, that’s very promising,” Korver says.

Canola meal naturally contains a lot of phenolic acid – compounds with known antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. For the lab portion of the research project, Pham fermented canola meal by adding probiotic lactobacilli. “I used lactic acid bacteria to ferment canola meal and then extracted the phenolic acids,” Pham says. | READ MORE