AIN-93 Purified Diets for Laboratory Rodents: Final
Report of the American Institute of Nutrition Ad
Hoc Writing Committee on the Reformulation
of the AIN-76A Rodent Diet

PHILIP G. REEVES, FORREST H. NIELSEN AND GEORGE C. FAHEY, JR.*

United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Grand Fork Human Nutrition Research Center, Grand Forks, HD 58202-9034 and *Department of Animal Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801 ABSTRACT For sixteen years, the American Institute of Nutrition Rodent Diets, AIN-76 and AIN-76A, have been used extensively around the world. Because of numerous nutritional and technical problems encountered with the diet during this period, it was revised. Two new formulations were derived: AIN-93G for growth, pregnancy and lactation, and AIN-93M for adult main tenance. Some major differences in the new formulation of AIM-93G compared with A1N-76A are as follows: 7 g soybean oil/100 g diet was substituted for 5 g corn oil/100 g diet to increase the amount of linolenic acid; cornstarch was substituted for sucrose; the amount of phosphorus was reduced to help eliminate the problem of kidney calcification in female rats; L-cystine was substituted for DL-methionine as the amino acid supplement for casein, known to be deficient in the sulfur amino acids; manganese concentration was lowered to onefifth the amount in the old diet; the amounts of vitamin E, vitamin K and vitamin B-12 were increased; and molybdenum, silicon, fluoride, nickel, boron, lithium and vanadium were added to the mineral mix. For the AIN-93M maintenance diet, the amount of fat was lowered to 40 g/kg diet from 70 g/kg diet, and the amount of casein to 140 g/kg from 200 g/kg in the AIN-93G diet.

Because of a better balance of essential nutrients, the AIN-93 diets may prove to be a better choice than AIN-76A for long-term as well as short-term studies with laboratory rodents. J. Nutr. 123: 1939-1951, 1993.   Read more…