Abstract
One of the challenges of the 21st century will be to feed more than 10 billion people by 2050. In animal feed, one of the promising approaches is to use agriculture by-products such as soybean meal as it represents a rich source of proteins. However, soybean meal proteins are embedded in a complex plant cell wall matrix, mostly composed of pectic polysaccharides, which are recalcitrant to digestion for animals and can cause digestive disorders in poultry breeding. In this study, we explored fungal diversity to find enzymes acting on soybean meal components. An exploration of almost 50 fungal strains enabled the identification of two strains (Aspergillus terreus and Aspergillus japonicus), which improved the solubilization of soybean meal in terms of polysaccharides and proteins. The two Aspergilli strains identified in the frame of this study offer a promising solution to process industrial food coproducts into suitable animal feed solutions.