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“King of the forage”—Alfalfa supplementation improves growth, reproductive performance, health condition and meat quality of pigs
As one kind of high-quality feed with rich nutrients, including high quality protein and amino acids, dietary fiber, enriched vitamins and mineral elements and bioactive molecules, alfalfa has been widely used in the production of ruminant livestock. As the understanding of alfalfa becomes more and...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9667112/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36406067 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2022.1025942 |
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author | Ma, Jixiang Huangfu, Weikang Yang, Xu Xu, Junying Zhang, Yan Wang, Zhichang Zhu, Xiaoyan Wang, Chengzhang Shi, Yinghua Cui, Yalei |
author_facet | Ma, Jixiang Huangfu, Weikang Yang, Xu Xu, Junying Zhang, Yan Wang, Zhichang Zhu, Xiaoyan Wang, Chengzhang Shi, Yinghua Cui, Yalei |
author_sort | Ma, Jixiang |
collection | PubMed |
description | As one kind of high-quality feed with rich nutrients, including high quality protein and amino acids, dietary fiber, enriched vitamins and mineral elements and bioactive molecules, alfalfa has been widely used in the production of ruminant livestock. As the understanding of alfalfa becomes more and more comprehensive, it is found that the high-quality nutrients in alfalfa could have positive effects on pigs. An increasing number of researches have shown that supplementing dietary alfalfa to the diet of gestating sows reduced constipation, alleviated abnormal behavior, improved satiety and reproductive performance; supplementing dietary alfalfa to the diet of piglets improved growth performance and intestinal barrier function, reduced intestinal inflammatory response and diarrhea; supplementing dietary alfalfa to the diet of growing-fattening pigs improved production performance and pork quality. Moreover, the mechanisms by which various nutrients of alfalfa exert their beneficial effects on pigs mainly including dietary fiber stimulating intestinal peristalsis, enhancing the activity of digestive enzymes, and promoting the colonization of beneficial bacteria in the intestinal tract through fermentation in the intestine, producing short-chain fatty acids and thus improving intestinal health; high quality protein and amino acids are beneficial to improve animal health condition; rich vitamins and mineral elements play an important role in various physiological functions and growth and development of the body; and bioactive molecules can improve the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory level. Therefore, alfalfa could be used as pig feed ingredient to alleviate various problems in the pig industry and to improve pig production performance. In this review, we detail the current application of alfalfa in pigs and discuss the potential mechanisms involved in how alfalfa improves growth and reproductive performance, pork quality, and intestinal health of the animals, thus laying the foundation for the increased application of high-quality forage in pig production. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9667112 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-96671122022-11-17 “King of the forage”—Alfalfa supplementation improves growth, reproductive performance, health condition and meat quality of pigs Ma, Jixiang Huangfu, Weikang Yang, Xu Xu, Junying Zhang, Yan Wang, Zhichang Zhu, Xiaoyan Wang, Chengzhang Shi, Yinghua Cui, Yalei Front Vet Sci Veterinary Science As one kind of high-quality feed with rich nutrients, including high quality protein and amino acids, dietary fiber, enriched vitamins and mineral elements and bioactive molecules, alfalfa has been widely used in the production of ruminant livestock. As the understanding of alfalfa becomes more and more comprehensive, it is found that the high-quality nutrients in alfalfa could have positive effects on pigs. An increasing number of researches have shown that supplementing dietary alfalfa to the diet of gestating sows reduced constipation, alleviated abnormal behavior, improved satiety and reproductive performance; supplementing dietary alfalfa to the diet of piglets improved growth performance and intestinal barrier function, reduced intestinal inflammatory response and diarrhea; supplementing dietary alfalfa to the diet of growing-fattening pigs improved production performance and pork quality. Moreover, the mechanisms by which various nutrients of alfalfa exert their beneficial effects on pigs mainly including dietary fiber stimulating intestinal peristalsis, enhancing the activity of digestive enzymes, and promoting the colonization of beneficial bacteria in the intestinal tract through fermentation in the intestine, producing short-chain fatty acids and thus improving intestinal health; high quality protein and amino acids are beneficial to improve animal health condition; rich vitamins and mineral elements play an important role in various physiological functions and growth and development of the body; and bioactive molecules can improve the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory level. Therefore, alfalfa could be used as pig feed ingredient to alleviate various problems in the pig industry and to improve pig production performance. In this review, we detail the current application of alfalfa in pigs and discuss the potential mechanisms involved in how alfalfa improves growth and reproductive performance, pork quality, and intestinal health of the animals, thus laying the foundation for the increased application of high-quality forage in pig production. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-11-02 /pmc/articles/PMC9667112/ /pubmed/36406067 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2022.1025942 Text en Copyright © 2022 Ma, Huangfu, Yang, Xu, Zhang, Wang, Zhu, Wang, Shi and Cui. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Veterinary Science Ma, Jixiang Huangfu, Weikang Yang, Xu Xu, Junying Zhang, Yan Wang, Zhichang Zhu, Xiaoyan Wang, Chengzhang Shi, Yinghua Cui, Yalei “King of the forage”—Alfalfa supplementation improves growth, reproductive performance, health condition and meat quality of pigs |
title | “King of the forage”—Alfalfa supplementation improves growth, reproductive performance, health condition and meat quality of pigs |
title_full | “King of the forage”—Alfalfa supplementation improves growth, reproductive performance, health condition and meat quality of pigs |
title_fullStr | “King of the forage”—Alfalfa supplementation improves growth, reproductive performance, health condition and meat quality of pigs |
title_full_unstemmed | “King of the forage”—Alfalfa supplementation improves growth, reproductive performance, health condition and meat quality of pigs |
title_short | “King of the forage”—Alfalfa supplementation improves growth, reproductive performance, health condition and meat quality of pigs |
title_sort | “king of the forage”—alfalfa supplementation improves growth, reproductive performance, health condition and meat quality of pigs |
topic | Veterinary Science |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9667112/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36406067 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2022.1025942 |
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