DuPont Pioneer Livestock Nutrition Center

Overview
 
The DuPont Pioneer Livestock Nutrition Center is responsible for research supporting the development of new products to improve animal nutrition.  As a company DuPont Pioneer uses the science of the lab and the land to maximize productivity and sustainability of the world's farmland.    It is their unwavering dedication to research and development – that yields results for their customers.  With that much focus of research, DuPont Pioneer spends a lot of time and money to find the best tools to support their efforts
 
Challenge
 
The DuPont Pioneer Livestock Nutrition Center developed a unique approach to measuring digestibility results for feeds and forages combining In Vivo, Neutral Detergent Fiber and Acid Detergent Fiber results. Combining and simplifying multiple analytical methods (In Vivo with In Vitro) in a way that would eliminate sample transfer error to support thousands of analyses annually was a difficult task.  How do you take a single sample and move it through multiple applications?  Equally challenging was finding ways to process thousands of samples with limited bench space, while keeping the cost per assay down.  All this had to be accomplished without sacrificing accuracy and precision.
 
Solution
 
By working with ANKOM Technology, the DuPont Pioneer Livestock Nutrition Center was able to incorporate In Vivo research with classical chemical analysis for measuring various digestibility rates.  It started with the addition of three ANKOM²⁰⁰ Fiber Analyzers to support Neutral Detergent and Acid Detergent Fiber analysis.  Working with larger grind sizes (6mm) the scientists at the Nutrition Center incorporated ANKOM’s in situ products in a way that allowed them to go directly from the animal to the analyzer.  Overtime analytical demand has grown to require sometimes as many as 600 samples in a single day.  To support this level of demand, without having to increase labor costs, the DuPont Pioneer Livestock Nutrition Center added three of the ANKOM²⁰⁰⁰ Automated Fiber Analyzers.