ME-PRO® is one of three finalists for the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s annual Global Aquaculture Innovation Award

Innovation Award 2020 finalist: ME-PRO from Prairie AquaTech

UNITED STATES
Tuesday, September 15, 2020, 16:00 (GMT + 9)

The following is an excerpt from  a Global Aquaculture Advocate article:

For South Dakota-based aquafeed ingredient maker, digestibility is as important as sustainability

An alternative aquaculture feed ingredient manufactured in the middle of the American Plains has been selected as one of three finalists for the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s annual Global Aquaculture Innovation Award.

ME-PRO® is a plant-based protein ingredient that has two primary goals: sustainability and digestibility, and not necessarily in that order. Created by Prairie AquaTech of Brookings, South Dakota, USA, ME-PRO is short for “microbially enhanced protein,” explained CEO Mark Luecke.

“Our technology can handle many types of plant protein. Soybean meal has a good starting protein content, about 45 percent,” Luecke told the Advocate. “But there are a number of antinutritional factors that need to be addressed, like allergenic proteins, oligosaccharides and complex carbohydrates. Our process increases protein content, also making it more digestible.”

At its manufacturing facility in nearby Volga, S.D., Prairie AquaTech has several 50,000-gallon bioreactors in which the company ferments soybean meal (sourced from an independent soy processor) with a naturally occurring microorganism or microbe, using sugars as a feedstock. The end product is “guaranteed 70 percent protein, highly digestible” that can be included in salmonid, shrimp and marine diets at high inclusion rates. Luecke said rainbow trout currently being sold at Whole Foods Market are raised on a diet with a ME-PRO inclusion rate of 35 percent.

Photo: Prairie AquaTech

Luecke stresses that ME-PRO’s strength is about what’s in the product as well as what is not. In extensive trials, which the company conducts in its own recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) at its research facility, ME-PRO has been shown to drastically lower phosphorous discharges from fish waste and is contaminant-free.(continued...)

Author: James Wright / Global Aquaculture Advocate | Read the rest of the story by clicking the link here

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