Close Encounters

Fish
and
Eggs

Mention fish and eggs in the same sentence and many folks may think of caviar. David Roland sees another connection.

Roland, distinguished university professor in Auburn University's Department of Poultry Science, has spent many work hours helping egg producers improve the quality of their product. He's spent many leisure hours wetting a line. The two areas of interest meshed about 10 years ago in an unusual turn of events.

A native of Cochran, Georgia, Roland went to college at the University of Georgia planning to become a veterinarian. However, during his second term in veterinary school, Roland realized that he was more interested in the woman he loved, who lived miles away, than in spending several more years completing his veterinary degree. He opted to get a Ph.D. in poultry science, graduating in 1970.

Following graduation, Roland accepted a job in Florida because he wanted to pursue another love — fishing.

“I like to fish and I chose Florida because it was close to the ocean and I could go fishing every weekend if I had the time,” Roland recalled. “And I did, a lot!”

“When I first started fishing there, I could catch enough fish on Saturday morning to feed my entire Sunday school class that night.” he continued. “But it wasn't very long before I couldn't catch enough fish for dinner.”

About that time Roland was offered a job at Auburn, which he saw as both a great career and a great fishing move. “I knew there was a lot of fishing in this area. West Point Lake was a brand new lake that just opened the year I came,” said Roland. That first year in Auburn (1976), Roland had great success at angling, averaging about 80 fish per trip, but by the next year his catch began to decrease.

Roland's wife, Linda, had a theory about his fishing foibles. “My wife thought that my fishing problems had to do with the number of boats I bought,” laughed Roland. “She even made a chart, plotting the number of fish I caught with each boat I bought...it went from 80 fish to nine, decreasing with each new boat.” But in 1989, Roland found another potential cause.

“I got a call from a USDA researcher who was asking why poultry producers put so much phosphorus in their chicken feed,” recalled Roland. Phosphorus is vital to poultry because it supports egg and bone development in birds. Corn and soybeans, which are standard ingredients in poultry feeds, contain phosphorus; however this form of phosphorus is not readily available to most birds. Thus, additional inorganic phosphorus has traditionally been added to poultry feeds to ensure that the chickens get enough phosphorus for proper growth and production. Unfortunately, some of this additional phosphorus also escapes into the environment and pollutes water supplies.

“I thought, gee whiz, maybe that's what's been stopping my fishing,” Roland said.

Motivated both by his love of science and his love of fishing, Roland decided to explore ways to reduce phosphate pollution. He knew about the development of a new enzyme, called phytase, that helped birds better utilize the natural phosphorus in corn and soybeans. If phytase could be added to feeds, then less supplemental phosphorus would be needed.

Roland noted that phytase was developed in the early 1970s, but was not cost effective and had not been marketed. To learn more about phytase, Roland took a sabbatical in 1990 with Gis Brocade, a company in the Netherlands that was developing the enzyme. By 1994 the product was ready to test and Roland began to study the effects of the product on egg production. The results were remarkable.

“When we took all the phosphorus out of the feed, egg production dropped to 10 percent. When we added phytase to a phosphorus-deficient ration, production increased up to 90 percent,” Roland said. “We didn't have to guess that it was working."

In 1996, at the largest poultry meeting in the world, Roland had the honor of officially introducing phytase as a commercial product. Now, more than half the layers in the United States are fed phytase. And its benefits seem to be multifold. It not only reduces the need for inorganic phosphorus in feed, phytase also appears to improve utilization of other nutrients, such as amino acids, calcium, and energy.

Phytase isn't the only focus of Roland's research on phosphorus or egg shell quality. He also has studied genetic selection of birds that seem to naturally produce phytase in their bodies, ways to recycle phosphorus from poultry litter and sludge, and he's exploring potential new sources of readily available phosphorus for feed rations.

In addition, Roland is studying other enzymes that may improve protein and amino acid utilization, which could reduce nitrogen pollution. “This whole enzyme thing is a significant new direction that the poultry industry is taking,” said Roland.

And the proof of this science is in the fishing. According to Roland, his catches are increasing these days, suggesting that the use of phytase may be reducing phosphorus levels in the state's water systems .