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A good strategy to use by-products of vegetables and fruit as the feed additives of layer diets to improve egg quality

The total planting areas for tomatoes and pumpkins are 4,000 and 5,000 hectares respectively in Taiwan. To bury or incinerate is the old method to deal with the residual by-products or off-grade products. Since circular economy and environmental protection are the mainstream in current agricultural policy, enhancing the value of residual by-products or off-grade products becomes very important.

The by-products of tomatoes and pumpkins still have higher nutritional value and functional compounds, e.g. lycopene and carotenoids. In order to promote the circular agricultural policy, TSIPS (Taiwan Seed Improvement and Propagation Station, Council of Agriculture) cooperates with Prof. Hsia’s research team in NPUST (National Pingtung University of Science and Technology) to study how to utilize tomato and pumpkin by-products, in dried powder form to be supplemented to layers diets. There was no chicken dead through the experiment, and the egg quality was improved. By adding at least 1% of tomato powder in diets increased egg yolk color, which can increase the purchasing intention by consumers. By adding 1% of pumpkin powder in diets improved the thickness of the eggshell and would not be fragile.

Usually, the breakfast shop won't use the whole tomato to make a hamburger, thus it will lead to huge amounts of food wastes. If they can be collected and processed to become powder form as feed additives, it can be of great benefit. The first step to extend the technic will reduce 3-5%, around 10 tons of agriculture wastes. The future work is to apply the technic to poultry farmers in Kaohsiung and Pingtung areas, and set up a circular agriculture demonstration center to properly handle the remaining by-products of agricultural production and enhance the competitiveness of the industry.

To promote circular agricultural policy, TSIPS uses the crush and dry processing of residual tomato and pumpkin by-products as the feed additives in the layer diets. Consequently, the treatment with tomato can increase the yolk color, and the diet with pumpkin can get the high thickness of the eggshell. It is expected that the results can be extended to farmers as a choice of feed additives to layer diets.

Figure 1. The environment for the experiment.
Figure 1. The environment for the experiment.

Figure 2. Adding at least 1% of tomato powder in diets increased egg yolk color.
Figure 2. Adding at least 1% of tomato powder in diets increased egg yolk color.
Figure 3. Adding 1% of pumpkin powder in diets can improved the thickness of the eggshell and would not be fragile.
Figure 3. Adding 1% of pumpkin powder in diets can improved the thickness of the eggshell and would not be fragile.