Location: Plant Genetics Research
Project Number: 5070-21000-044-001-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Oct 1, 2022
End Date: Mar 31, 2024
Objective:
Trypsin inhibitor (TI) is a major anti-nutritional protein in soybean meal. Here, we propose to develop a simple, reliable and inexpensive procedure that can be routinely utilized by soybean processors as a standard method to measure trypsin inhibitor levels.
Approach:
We recently developed an easy and rapid procedure to measure trypsin inhibitor activity in soybean meal. We modified and improved the official industry methods resulting in the elimination of several time-consuming steps and drastically reducing the assay volume from 10 to 1 mL. In this proposal, we will be further refining our 1 mL assay to increase the reliability of our assay. Many samples provided by the feed industry will be used for the validation of our new protocol. We believe our refined method will increase the accuracy of the assay and drastically reduce the cost of the assay. Additionally, we will examine the feasibility of measuring the trypsin inhibitor activity in 96-well microplates which will enable high-throughput screening of large number of soy meal samples.
