ADDITIVE NATURE OF DIGESTIBLE ENERGY AND RELATIVE ENERGY VALUES OF DIFFERENT ENERGY-YIELDING NUTRIENTS IN PRACTICAL TROUT DIETS

A study is reported which investigated the additive nature of digestible energy (DE) from dietary nutrients and to estimate the relative energy values of different energy-yielding nutrients in practical trout diets. A growth study was conducted over 12 weeks with 6 diets. Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) were fed diets once a day ad libitum. Digestible energy values determined and calculated had direct relationship indicating additive nature of such values for feed ingredients. Overall growth performance was best in a diet containing 33% digestible protein (DP) with a DP/DE ratio of 18.6. A reduction in digestible protein level with the same DP/DE rat io led to a significant decrease in growth and feed efficiency. The increase of 7% of lipid with concomitant decrease in protein resulted in the relative gain of 130% in growth and nutrient retention, suggesting that 1 g of lipid is equal to about 1.3 g of proteins in terms of net energetic value. Replacement of 10% of dietary lipid by carbohydrates led to a slight decrease in energy retention efficiency but to a great increase in lipid retention efficiency (130%) showing that dietary carbohydrates led to increased lipogenesis.