According to a botanical point of view the soya bean belongs to the leguminosae family. This species produces erect plants from 30 cm to 2 metres and has small flowers.

Culture of the soya bean requires little in the way of fertilizers and pesticides.

Soya has very many agronomic assets:

• It uses nitrogen from the air and thus does not require chemical nitrate fertilizer.
• It carries micronutrients which enriches the soil.
• It is resistant to many parasites & diseases and as such soya plants require little chemical treatment.

Soya is cultivated on deep, soft soil of a clay sand mix or loam type, with an approximate Ph value of 4.5.

Soya requires excellent sunlight for the whole of its growth cycle.

In France, soya is sown in May and harvested in Sept-Oct . It is mainly cultivated under irrigation in the South-West where the production yield is approximately 3 to 3.5 tons per hectare. At the present time, there is no GM seed in France

* Where does the soya bean come from?

Soya originates from the North-East of China (Manchuria) and today is cultivated under the name of Glycine Soya. The cultivation of the soya bean spread throughout  Asia during the 14 th century when soya was introduced into human food.

The Europeans did not discover the soya bean until the 16th and 17th centuries, and only at the beginning of  the 18th century were the first studies about the benefits of the soya bean conducted.
Thereafter, cultivation of the soya bean spread thoughout the rest of Europe and then to the United States.

Grazed or used as hay, and even for silage, soya has been gradually introduced into the feed rations of principal breeding animals (poultry, bovines) mainly in the form of seed-cake*, to become the world’s first proteinic raw material for animals.

* A by-product rich in proteins and low in fat content, obtained after extraction of the seed’s oil with chemical solvent.

*Soya vegetable for food, Soya beans for feed: not to be confused!

The soya bean is harvested when the seeds are bent and fill the green pods to 90%. It can be consumed as food in the manner of peas, in soup, curry or stew, or like groundnuts in purees, always in preparations requiring a long cooking time.

The soya bean is an important food value, It’s a vegetable with one of the richest protein contents. It also provides an important source of vitamins and minerals.
Soya beans for feed are harvested when the dry seed floats in the interior of the pod. It is thus ready for extrusion.

*Soya in the world

Soya production within the EU continues to increase. France produces 20% of the EU’s output. However, Italy remains the major producer accounting for 66% of the EU’s global tonnage.

The world production which in 2005 stood at 225 million tons and continues to increase in almost all countries, except for India. As we can see, The United States was still the major world producer in 2004, but in 2005 Brazil held the leading  place, in front of the USA, Argentina and China.

Cultivation of soya expanded in Brazil, especially in the 70’s in the states of Parana and Rio Grande do Sul. Cultivated for exportation , today more and more is used in the domestic food market because of an increasing demand for margarine and oil.

At the beginning of the 1960’s , South America cultivated only 250,000 hectares of soya, while today the superficy reaches 21 million hectares. Currently, soya is also being developed in the semi-arid areas.

*By-products of Soya:

Seed cakes are the solid residues obtained after extraction of seed oil with chemical solvent. They are the trituration ( oil manufacturing industry) coproducts.
The oil has many industrial applications (soaps, detergents, paints, glycerophtalic resins, lubricants, cosmetics, inks, etc …).
Seed cakes are used in animal feed. They constitute the second most important feed class after cereals because they are a principal source of proteins, despite their treatment with chemical solvent.

*The benefits of Soya for humans:

The food containing soya does not contain cholesterol and its lipidic profile is rich in unsaturated fatty acids, mainly Omega 6. Consumption of soya makes it easier to balance our nutrition,  but more importantly causes a reduction in blood cholesterol level.
Soya is particularly recommended for women, because it contains a phyto- œstrogene, called  isoflavon, which is concentrated in the germ seed.
Isoflavon acts as a precursor to light hormonal activity , able to imitate to a small extent oestrogen activity.
This is why soya is recommended to mitigate undesirable menopausal side effects.
It also reduces cellular division risks, and therefore it is useful in the fight against breast, uterus, prostate and colon cancers.

The benefit of soya to humans is achieved in two ways. By direct consumption or indirectly from meat where the live animal consumed soya.

Soya is particularly rich in proteins, since the whole seed contains at least 35% protein. Moreover, soya contains the 8 amino acids known as essential acids, present in nature among the 20 amino acids which constitute whole proteins.

These 8 essential amino acids are: Isoleucin, Leucin, Lysine, Thréonin, Tryptophan, Valine, Methionin + Cystin, Phenylalanin + Tyrosine

They are known as essential because the human body can’t manufacture them. These amino acids are important for nerve cells within the nervous system. They are essential in diet. For this reason soya nutritional interest is strong.

However, soya does not contain iron. It is thus necessary to supplement the use of soya with meat for example.

*For the anti-nutritive factors of Soya: One solution – DIALZO’s process

Soya in its natural state contains anti-nutritive factors. However only protease inhibitors stop protein digestion. These inhibitors are mainly of an anti-tryptic type.
Trypsin is an endogenous enzyme produced in the pancreas. It’s the most important of the proteinases group , which breaks up proteins into amino acids (lysin, methionin, etc…). Trypsin acts as a key which unlocks the proteins, to ensure their  digestion.
The trypsin inhibitors are generally vegetable origin.

In the digestive tract, inhibiors transform trypsin. Thus the enzyme is changed and does not function any more, there is no decomposition of proteins in amino acids. The principle of “lock and key” between the enzyme and the substrate (protein) is stopped.
This results for animals in severe diarrhoea. The consequences are considerable weight loss and a  break down in reproductive functions. In breeding animals, when the toxic threshold is reached, the consequences are catastrophic and irreversible because the effect is cumulative.

The enzyme urease is also present in soya. It’s a vegetable enzyme which breaks up urea into hydroxide nitrogenizes (NH3). It has little importance in animal digestion .

Anti-nutritive factors are thermosensitive, they are thus inactivated in heat treatment.

In animal feed, the possible industrial heat treatments are varied, but only one offers all these benefits and that is the Cooking-Extrusion method. It’s our choice. This is the most complete technology suitable to allow the destruction of the contaminant germs and anti-nutritional factors of soya.