Field peas
Field peas are predominantly produced in Canada and temperate areas where oilseeds are not grown. There is growing interest in using field peas in swine diets due to the considerably reduced environmental concerns of cultivating field peas (White et al., 2015). Field peas are legumes that can fix most of their own nitrogen and do not require substantial use of nitrogenous fertilizer for cultivation. Only field peas harvested at maturity are used in swine diets.
Field peas contain around 22% crude protein and relatively high concentration of lysine, but low concentration of methionine, cysteine, and tryptophan compared to soybean meal (NRC, 2012). Field peas have relatively high concentration of energy because of the high concentration of starch. Field peas contain the anti-nutritional factors trypsin and chymotrypsin inhibitors at low concentrations, which are inactivated by heat processing.