• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.551-566
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• 1997

Phosphorus has been known as an essential component of animal body. However, the requirement has not been determined precisely because of the variable bioavailabilities of feedstuffs from plant origin. The bioavailability of P in various feedstuffs of plant origin varies from 10 to 60%. Digestibility and availability of the P differed considerably depending on the feed. The lowest values were found for maize (under 20%), the highest for wheat and triticale (over 50%). This is due to the proportion of phytate and the presence of intrinsic phytase. And the digestive tract of monogastric animals does not contain sufficient amounts of phytase, an enzyme that hydrolyses the unavailable phytate complexes to available, inorganic orthophosphates. Microbial phytase supplementation improves the P availability, and both intrinsic plant and microbial phytase improves the availability of P in feedstuffs of plant origin. In a mixture of feeds with low and high activity of intrinsic phytase and/or supplemented by commercial phytase, the P availability is additive. However, in the light of current results it seems that exceeding the P availability equal to 60-70% is unrealizable even at large microbial phytase doses.