A new study confirms dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS) use as a safe, efficient feed for aquaculture, promising new market opportunities for U.S. corn, according to an announcement from the Illinois Corn Marketing Board (ICMB).

The National DDGS Library, established at the National Corn to Ethanol Research Center (NCERC), provided a sample base to understand the nutritional risk and benefit of using DDGS as a common aquafeed ingredient, the announcement said.

NCERC collaborated with the Center for Fisheries, Aquaculture & Aquatic Sciences at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and conducted a feeding trial on tilapia using DDGS sourced from corn from an Illinois ethanol plant. Red tilapia was utilized for the project due to its fast growth and high performance in intensive culture systems, ICMB said.

After several months of feeding, results showed that the fish survival rate was high and average weight gain comparable to traditional diets without DDGS, the announcement said.

In addition to feed efficiency in tilapia, the National DDGS Library at NCERC studied the amount of antibiotic residue found in DDGS from ethanol plants across 13 states with most being in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Minnesota. DDGS were tested for the antibiotic residue virginiamycin M in collaboration with the Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville department of chemistry.

All samples showed a virginiamycin M level of 0.4 parts per million, which is substantially below the 2% regulation allowed in animal feed, ICMB said.

The U.S. Grains Council (USGC), with work funded by ICMB, will use this data to sell additional DDGS to the Southeast Asia aquaculture industry.

USGC senior director of global programs Cary Sifferath said, “I know our Southeast Asia staff were very happy to see the executive summary of both the tilapia trial and antibiotic survey. They see a 3-5% inclusion rate of DDGS in most tilapia diets in the Southeast Asia region and with this data hope to bump those numbers up to a 10% inclusion rate.”