Animal Nutrition and Health
A large proportion of the energy content in cereals is present as non-starch polysaccharides (NSP). The NSP's such as arabinoxylans in wheat and rye, and ß-glucans in barley and oats, are soluble. This results in increased viscosity in the animal, which impairs digestion. The addition of enzyme activities not present in the animal (xylanases and ß-glucanases) can overcome the ANF effects of NSP's. Such enzyme addition has become very popular and now, over 90% of global poultry diets containing viscous cereals such as wheat or barley are formulated with an NSP enzyme to degrade the polysaccharide ANF's.