In this interview with Think Grain Think Feed, Dr. Hugo Romero, Ph.D., Executive Manager and Global Poultry Technology Lead at NOVUS, shares his expert insights on the future of poultry nutrition amidst rising feed costs, ingredient variability, and sustainability challenges. Drawing on over a decade of global experience in broiler and layer nutrition, Dr. Romero discusses the potential of alternative feed ingredients, the importance of fiber and fat quality, precision enzyme strategies, and practical approaches to optimizing bird performance while supporting sustainable poultry production.
Hugo Romero, NOVUS
With fluctuating costs, inconsistent availability, and growing environmental concerns surrounding traditional feedstuffs like corn and soybean meal, which potential alternative ingredients do you see shaping the future of poultry nutrition?
In our global, integrated production system, challenges with cost, availability, and environmental impact will exist to some extent for any raw ingredient. There’s no magic cure to these challenges; it’s about finding ways to operate within them. Impact can be minimized through careful supply chain planning, identifying multiple sources of ingredients, and reducing environmental impacts on our own farms.
Consistent quality and availability of alternative ingredients remain a major challenge for the industry. Which countries are leading in adopting and integrating these alternatives effectively?
Due to its strong environmental and welfare policies, Europe seems to lead the way. The aquaculture market in Southeast Asia is also an early adopter of alternative feeds. As for production, while China may lead in insect meal, markets globally produce protein, fat and carbohydrate alternatives from their own produce, meal and grain harvests.
What are the primary challenges in evaluating the nutritional value of alternative feed ingredients, and how does their variability impact diet formulation and bird performance?
Evaluating the nutritional value of alternative feed ingredients is difficult due to their high variability in composition and quality. Factors such as raw material origin, processing methods, and storage conditions create wide nutrient fluctuations that affect digestibility and bird performance.
Moreover, NIR calibrations for these ingredients can be less precise, leading to outliers and inaccurate nutrient estimates. This uncertainty forces nutritionists to apply larger safety margins in formulations, which increases feed costs and reduces the economic advantage of using alternative ingredients. In short, variability and analytical imprecision limit confidence and consistency, making it harder to realize the full value and sustainability potential of alternative feed sources.
Your review emphasizes the importance of accurately characterizing fiber fractions and non-starch polysaccharides. How do these components influence gut health, nutrient digestibility, and the strategic application of enzymes?
In poultry nutrition, starch digestibility is already very high—often close to 100%—¬so while it is important to measure, it provides limited opportunity for further improvement through enzyme use. The real focus should be on non-starch polysaccharides (NSP) and fiber fractions, which have a much greater impact on gut health and nutrient digestibility.
Soluble NSP can increase intestinal viscosity, impairing nutrient absorption, while insoluble fiber can help maintain gut motility and microbiota balance. By accurately characterizing these fractions, nutritionists can strategically apply NSP-degrading enzymes (such as xylanase or β-glucanase), depending on the ingredients, to reduce viscosity, unlock nutrients and increase oligosaccharides that improve overall gut function and feed efficiency. In short, precise fiber and NSP profiling enhances both enzyme effectiveness and bird health and performance consistency.
Can you elaborate on how fat quality—particularly fatty acid profile and degree of saturation—affects metabolizable energy and overall bird performance? Are there specific tools or metrics you find especially reliable for assessing fat digestibility?
Fat quality strongly influences metabolizable energy (ME) value and overall bird performance. Fats rich in unsaturated fatty acids are more digestible and provide higher ME than saturated fats, particularly for young birds with limited fat digestion capacity. The unsaturated/saturated (U/S) ratio is therefore a critical factor for correcting fat energy values.
However, other quality aspects, such as non-elutable material (impurities) and oxidative deterioration measured by peroxide and anisidine values, also affect digestibility and gut health. Reliable evaluation tools include fatty acid profiling, oxidative stability tests, and digestibility assays. Together, these parameters determine the true energy contribution and consistency of fats in poultry diets.
In your opinion, how well are current feed evaluation systems (such as international nutritional tables and standards) adapted to regional ingredient variability and emerging feedstuffs? What improvements would you advocate for?
Current feed evaluation systems often fall short in reflecting regional, seasonal, and processing-related variability, especially for emerging or alternative feedstuffs. To achieve more accurate formulations, it’s essential to complement table values with local wet chemistry analyses or updated NIR data that capture the actual nutrient composition of ingredients used in each region and season.
Additionally, feed evaluation systems should better account for anti-nutritional factors, such as trypsin inhibitors, tannins, or NSP content, which can significantly affect nutrient availability and bird performance. Incorporating these variables into predictive models would make energy and digestibility estimates far more reliable. Adjusting amino acids digestibility according to trypsin inhibitor is a good tool to improve uniformity and the successful use of enzymes like proteases.
Looking ahead, what innovations or enzyme strategies do you believe will be game-changers in unlocking the full nutritional potential of alternative feed ingredients—particularly in terms of cost-effectiveness and sustainability?
While the future will provide options, we need to push using more of the solutions we have today. Protease enzymes have historically been under-leveraged in poultry diets. We can change that. For instance, birds fed CIBENZA® Enzyme Feed Additive have demonstrated better growth performance and health, especially in challenging field conditions or when the trypsin inhibitor level in soybean meal is high. Next-generation proteases and precision enzyme blends are expected to further unlock the potential of alternative ingredients, improving cost effectiveness and sustainability of poultry production.
Do you have any final message or advice for the Indian poultry industry as it navigates changing nutritional landscapes and feed challenges?
Regardless of what you’re feeding, it’s vital you understand the nutrient makeup of your ingredients. For instance, many alternative feed ingredients (e.g., oilseed meals, local by‑products, lower‑grade grains) carry anti‑nutritional factors that impact digestion or are simply less digestible. Enzyme supplementation can help, but it is essential to understand the nutritional foundation of the birds’ diet to get the most from the enzymes.
