Development of a protocol for assessing the bioavailability of arginine in feather meal fed to rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss ).

摘要

This thesis is an investigation of the suitability of a slope ratio assay used to evaluate the bioavailability of arginine in feather meal to rainbow trout. Fish were fed to satiety for 12 weeks with isonitrogenous and isoenergetic diets containing graded levels of arginine provided by either synthetic L-arginine or steam-hydrolysed feather meal. The fish responded in a linear fashion to increasing levels of L-arginine, however, did not respond to increasing feather meal bound arginine. A subsequent experiment suggested that the diets formulated with increasing levels of feather meal may have become deficient in one or more essential amino acids.This study highlights a significant limitation of slope ratio assay in that it assumes no interaction between varying the level of the test ingredient and changes in other nutrients. The results also suggest that NRC (1993) may underestimate some ofthe essential amino acid requirements of rainbow trout.