What is it about?
Microalgae are interesting novel protein feed for livestock due to their extremely rapid growth rate and high protein concentration (up to 70%), but how do they actually fit to dairy cow nutrition? We have shown that microalgae are suitable protein feed for lactating dairy cows. However, the protein value of microalgae is likely slightly lower than that of rapeseed meal, which actually is not a bad result since rapeseed meal is considered as the best protein feed in grass silage and cereal based dairy cow diets.
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Why is it important?
Microalgae are potentially one solution to make livestock production more sustainable. Global agricultural production is facing a tremendous challenge to match the supply of food to the rapidly increasing demand from larger and wealthier population while cutting down the environmental costs of food production and preventing undernourishment of the poorest. Due to their rapid growth rate and high protein concentration, microalgae have potential to reduce the food-feed competition for land and improve food security. Moreover, microalgae cultivation can be carried out in marginal or non-arable land unsuitable to other agricultural production.
Perspectives
Doing research about the feed use of microalgae was a great adventure since the prior knowledge in this field was very limited. We were the first researchers to compare microalgae and rapeseed meal as protein feeds in dairy cow nutrition. This study is a part of my PhD thesis - so there's more publications about microalgae coming up very soon! Even though microalgae feeding to cows is not yet a reality due to high production costs of microalgae, I hope this article gives insights to the great potential microalgae have in livestock feeding in the future.
Marjukka Lamminen
Helsingin Yliopisto
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Comparison of microalgae and rapeseed meal as supplementary protein in the grass silage based nutrition of dairy cows, Animal Feed Science and Technology, December 2017, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.anifeedsci.2017.10.002.
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