New Millennium Microscopy Network   

Need to identify an unfamiliar contaminant or adulterant in an ingredient? What about that strange stuff your customer found in the feed? AgriMedia’s new Feed Microscopy Atlas by Hans Klein and Richard Marquard offers a wealth of knowledge and illustrations to answer such feed identification questions.

This Atlas is a well-organized collection of interpretive drawings and descriptions of the morphological components of both common and specialized feed ingredients. Most common feed ingredients are covered but it is the details beyond the routine, particularly the details of the many oilseed, weed and tropical seed structures and of the various leaf structures, that will be appreciated by feed microscopists. Numerous fish meal and aquatic organism structures, some of which previously had not been illustrated and described in English, are also covered. Illustrations of mammalian ingredients are somewhat limited but they cover the common ingredients.

The book is printed on high quality, glossy surfaced paper to maximize clarity of the illustrations although the drawings are somewhat "soft edged" and grey-colored compared to most black-lined classical interpretive drawings. Each illustration in the Atlas has a description of the structures and the various component parts are well marked. Some terminology differences between continents and languages are present. One example was "rice shells" which are more commonly called "rice hulls" in English or botanically identified as palea and lemma. Another case was the use of "lacuna" for both the lucunae and canaliculi of bones with no differentiation between the two structures. However, anyone with a good knowledge of feed ingredients will not be confused by these minor language quirks.

This is a dedicated technical manual for the identification of feed ingredients. It is of particular importance for its descriptions and illustrations of those ingredients that are difficult to obtain in authentic form. It is not designed as a "how to do feed microscopy" book although a brief seven pages of methods and techniques are discussed at the beginning. It has no color stereoscopic or macroscopic photos. It is instead a laboratory reference handbook for the practicing microscopist and feed quality technician working at the tissue and cellular level. I recommend AgriMedia’s Feed Microscopy Atlas as an important addition to your permanent feed microscopy reference library.

Dr. Lynn S. Bates
Forensic Food and
Feed Microscopist