Exocrine Pancreatic Secretions in Young PigsFed Diets Containing Faba Beans (Vicia faba)and Peas (Pisum sativum): Nitrogen, Protein and Enzyme Secretions

Abstract

Two experiments were carried out to investigate the effect of feeding diets containing faba beans and peas on pancreatic secretions in young pigs fitted with a pancreatic pouch re-entrant cannula. In Experiment 1, eight barrows, with an average initial weight of 8·5 kg, were fed one of two maize starch-based diets formulated to contain 200 g crude protein (CP) kg−1 according to a completely randomised design. In one of the diets, soya bean meal was the sole protein source; in the other diet, soya bean meal and faba beans (cv Fibro; dark-flowering) each supplied 50% of the dietary CP. In Experiment 2, five barrows, with an average initial weight of 18·1 kg, were fed one of two diets according to a two-period change-over design. The diets were formulated to contain 150 g CP kg−1 with peas (cv Ascona or cv Radley) as the sole protein source. In both experiments, the experimental periods consisted of 8 days: 6 days adaptation followed by a 2 day collection of pancreatic juice. The soya bean meal diet and the faba bean diet contained 0.04 and 0.21% tannins (catechin equivalents), respectively. The trypsin inhibitor activities of the Ascona and Radley pea diets were 0·76 and 3·24 mg of trypsin inhibited per gram, respectively. In both experiments, diet did not affect (P>0·05) the pancreatic secretions of nitrogen, protein, amylase, lipase and chymotrypsin. In Experiment 1, specific trypsin activity was higher (P<0·05) in pancreatic juice from pigs fed the diet containing soya bean meal and faba beans (53700 units litre−1) than for those fed the soya bean meal diet (41200 units litre−1). However, there was no effect (P>0·05) when trypsin activity was expressed as total activity (units 24 h−1). It is concluded that the inclu-sion of faba beans and peas in diets for young pigs has only minor effects on exocrine pancreatic secretions.