Project - Protein from locally grown legumes and algae for organic chickens - ProLocAL

The ProLocAL project is a ICROFS Organic RDD GUDP Project.

Project start January 2022. Project end December 31st. 2024.

The main project goal is to improve the environmental footprint of organic chicken meat production, by feeding the chickens with locally produced crops and microalgae instead of imported protein sources - without affecting taste, texture or quality of the meat.

It is a challenge to provide protein for chicken production with an adequate content of the essential amino acid methionine required to maintain a healthy plumage and strong immune system of the animals as well as healthy growth, meat quality and storage of the product.

Currently, organic chickens are fed excess protein, to compensate for the low content of sulfur amino acids in traditional feed protein. This entails increased ammonia emissions from poultry farms and compromised animal welfare.

Combining protein-rich microalgae, containing 20% more methionine than soybean protein, and locally produced legumes is a promising and completely new approach overcoming the challenge of both climate impact and the present procedure of feeding excess protein in the Danish organic broiler production.

ProLocAL creates value for organic chicken producers by developing a protein feed consisting of locally grown microalgae and legumes that can substitute the use of imported soyprotein in the organic chicken production.

The role of Danish Technological Institute in the ProLocAL project is to apply nutrient-rich side streams from organic grass protein- and biogas production for local cultivation of protein rich microalgal biomass and to increase the digestibility of the microalgae by application of extrustion cooking.

Please read

Watch ProLocAL video

Objectives

• Incorporate brown juice and biogas side-streams as nutrients for organic microalgae cultivation
• Improve digestibility of microalgae/legume protein by extrusion
• Formulate broiler diets with microalgae
• Conduct feeding and digestibility experiments with organic broilers
• Analyze meat quality of broilers from feeding trials
• Assess the welfare of broilers from the feeding trials

Partners

• Rokkedahl Landbrug
• Vestjyllands Andel
• SEGES
• Aarhus University, Dep. of Animal Science (project lead)
• University of Copenhagen, KU-FOOD
• Danish Technological Institute (Denmark)

The project is a part of the Organic RDD 7-programme, which is coordinated by ICROFS (Internationalt Center for Forskning i Økologisk Jordbrug og Fødevaresystemer) in cooperation with GUDP.

The project is partly financed by Fjerkræafgiftsfonden.

The results from the project will be available free of charge to companies active in the poultry sector.