M.C. Fernando R. Feuchter A.

@Gene Pesti - YOU are welcome dear Prof. Dr. Pesti! Indeed, the biological/ organic farms are really nice and I like the philosophy behind them; however, I believe the industry would welcome more flexibility from regulatory point of view – especially with regard to feeding.As a passionate animal nutritionist, I really appreciate and respect your work. Thank you!

It is hard to evaluate much of the data in this area because there are so many factors involved. In my early work we were not controlling folic acid levels, a mistake. I am glad that one of my students and I were the ones that figured it out. Wheat products can contain up to 4000mg/kg betaine. Animal products and most other plant products have some. Corn and soy have none that we could detect. At ...

@Kalyani SarodeDear Kalyani Sarode, your remark adds an aspect which we usually do not emphasize a lot in context of whether or not betaine can replace supplemental methionine. Indeed, also cobalamine (B12) has an - at least - as important role for remethylating homocysteine to methionine - which actually reduces the importance of betaine in this context.You remind me to be scientifically correct. ...

@dear Mario, in my view, we cannot make meaningful progress in defining starch quality unless we first reach global agreement on an appropriate method for total starch analysis. For more than twenty years we have debated Ewers versus enzymatic starch determination, and the discrepancies—especially in pulses—remain substantial. In many cases, the analytical method used is not even reported, which f ...

@Luis Fernando Vergamini Luna Thank you. I also wonder about the effects of starch forms. In particular, is starch form responsible for peanut meal making incredible pellets compared to other protein sources? And I'm glad you said thermal comfort zone and not thermal neutral zone. Animals are always loosing heat to their environments as long as their body temperature is less than room temperature. ...

Hello, Dr., thank you for your comments. It is a good suggestion. There is one issue. Betaine is known as a methyl group donor that may change the course of the experiment and record new data. And if it plays a role in heat stress, we should look at the role of betaine in the production of glucose because the only way to get rid of stress is to produce glucose and maintain the body's sugar level s ...