A bright IDEA from Novus International could help both hog producers and the ethanol industry.

IDEA stands for “Immobilized Digestive Enzyme Assay” which Dr. Brad Lawrence with Novus says helps measure the digestibility of lysine and other amino acids in dried distillers grains (DDGS), the livestock feed by-product of ethanol production. “Distillers is one of the few ingredients that we have that does come from multiple manufacturing facilities with different methods that could impact amino acid digestibility,” said Dr. Lawrence. “We run this laboratory procedure that looks at all the digestibility of all the amino acids which gives us a tool to compare the economic value of distillers from different sources.”

Novus is working on a National Pork Board research project with the National Corn to Ethanol Research Center and the Universities of Illinois and Minnesota to find the best assays for determining amino acid digestibility of distillers grains. The results of that research are expected later this year.

I interviewed Dr. Lawrence about IDEA at the World Pork Expo last week. Listen to that interview here: [audio:http://www.zimmcomm.biz/wpx/wpx09-brad.mp3]