Potential of Agro-Food Residues to Produce Enzymes for Animal Nutrition

The supplement of animal diets with hydrolytic enzymes could also improve the nutritional factors by removing antinutrients from diet or being applied as a predigestion process of animal feed to degrade materials such as cellulose and hemicellulose and increasing its digestibility and quality. Several agro-food wastes have been reported to be efficient as substrates to produce enzymes in the animal feed industry, which not only contribute to their management but also transformed them into value-added products. This chapter presents an overview of agro-food waste potential to produce enzymes useful as a supplement in animal feed, such as cereals straw, whey, fruit shells, and bagasse, among others. A description of several enzymes used in animal feed, their production by fermentation of residues, purification processes, and their perspectives are also presented. This chapter presents an overview of agro-food waste potential to produce enzymes useful as a supplement in animal feed, such as cereals straw, whey, fruit shells, and bagasse, among others. It also presents a description of several enzymes used in animal feed, their production by fermentation of residues, purification processes, and their perspectives. Proteins are also important nutrients in animal feed. Supplementation of animal diets with protease is the focus on the reduction of feed cost by the decrease in crude protein concentration and substitution of external protein sources in diet formulation with cheaper ones. Solid-state fermentation consist of microbial growth on the surface and inside of a solid porous matrix, in absence of almost absence of free water; however, the substrate must have enough moisture to support the growth and metabolism of the microorganism. The genome mining of genomic and metagenomics DNA databases represents a suitable, faster, simpler and more economically efficient tool to enzyme screening than classical methods.