COMPOSITION AND NUTRITIVE-VALUE OF PEAS FOR PIGS - A REVIEW OF EUROPEAN RESULTS

Pea (Pisum sativum) is the legume seed most used for pig feeding in Europe. Its crude protein content is intermediate between soya bean meal and grains. As for other legume seeds or grains, linear regressions have been established between amino acid and crude protein contents. Pea protein contains more lysine but less sulphur amino acids and tryptophan than soya bean meal protein. Some pea cultivars contain antinutritional factors such as trypsin inhibitors, lectins and α-galactosides; more over tannins are found in dark-flowered cultivars. The digestible energy value is similar to soya bean meal or grains for white-flowered peas (P. sativum hortense) and slightly lower for dark-flowered peas (P. sativum arvense). Pea cultivars with low trypsin inhibiting activity (TIA) and low tannin content can be widely used by growing-finishing pigs providing diets are well balanced for all limiting amino acids. The use of cultivars with more TIA is much more limited, although different processing methods such as extrusion can have positive effects. The use of pea in diets for piglets is not so well known: with more than 15% of pea in the diet, performance is impaired in most cases, possibly because of a lack in sulphur amino acids in the diets. For breeding sows results are controversial: several authors from Northern Europe report a negative effect of pea on litter size whereas in other experiments no detrimental effect of pea was observed on any reproductive parameter. © 1990.