Development of Phosphorus Reduction Strategies in Swine Manure and Assessment by Chemical and Spectroscopic Methods is a two year project just getting underway at the new National Centre for Livestock and the Environment and being conducted by the University of Manitoba in partnership with the Agricultural Research and Development Initiative.

Associate professor Dr. Martin Nyachoti says scientists with the department of animal science will evaluate various diet manipulation strategies in an effort to lower phosphorus levels in the diets and reduce phosphorus in the manure and then turn over the manure to the department of soil science for soil studies.

Dr. Martin Nyachoti-University of Manitoba

We are going to work primarily with pigs and we will work with growing finishing pigs at our new research facilities and we will also do some studies on here on campus so that we are able to collect the manure for some of the experiments that we are going to do.

In terms of the diets themselves we will probably be using pretty much typical type diets used in western Canada but we are also hoping to get an opportunity to include such ingredients as low phytate barley in these studies as well.

In animal science we are looking at developing the diets, we are looking at designing the animal experiments and feeding those diets to the animals and collecting the manure and then we'll hand over those to the guys in soil science and they will do soil simulation studies where they will apply the manure to soil and then they will follow the movement of phosphorus from different manures.

Dr. Nyachoti says scientists will also examine how these diet formulation strategies and how the type of storage system impacts the solubility of manure phosphorus and its ability to move through the soil.