SPECIAL STORY 60 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE June 2022 FIBRE IN MONOGASTRIC: FROM UNDESIRABLE TO BENEFICIAL NUTRIENT There is a high interest towards fibre understanding and how this can be optimally used in feed formulation for monogastric, to improve performance and guarantee a good gastrointestinal health. The past years a lot of work has been conducted by the AB Vista team, in cooperation with researchers from across the globe, in the area of fibre for monogastric nutrition. Extensive work has been done to better characterize fibre beyond the traditional measurement of crude fibre in poultry, or Neutral Detergent Fibre (NDF) and Acid Detergent Fibre (ADF) in swine. Thanks to the NIR technology it is now feasible to quickly and robustly assess the characteristics of the total dietary fibre including lignin and total and soluble Non-Starch Polysaccharides (NSPs) based on constituent sugars (Gomes et al., 2020). Soluble NSPs seems to be a relevant criterion to look at, due to their effect on viscosity, transit rate, digestibility as well as in being the main substrate for hindgut fermentation resulting in Short Chain Fatty Acid (SCFA) production. Recent data suggests that more mature animals, with an established fibre fermenting microbiome, respond positively to higher level of soluble NSPs whilst younger animals, if the microbiome has not been stimulated to ferment fibre, would respond negatively in terms of performance (Gomes et al., under publication). Soluble NSPs can be beneficial in terms of growth performance and gut functionality through the development of a fibrolytic environment and limiting the potential pathogenic bacteria growth (Nguyen et al., 2021; Rousseau et al., under publication), but to obtain this response it needs to be used correctly. In broiler chickens, Nguyen et al. from University of New England, Australia, investigated the effect of fibre on gastro-intestinal tract development, welfare and behaviour. They confirmed what Bedford et al., (1991) observed earlier as a linear increase of ileal viscosity with higher concentration of soluble NSPs. This effect is more pronounced in wheat than in corn-based diets, mainly because of the higher NSP content in wheat and greater proportion of higher molecular weight NSP in wheat compared to corn (Bedford et al., 1991; Kiarie et al., 2014) but could also be explained by the different soluble components proportion between both cereals. How the birds can deal with soluble NSP depends on several factors (environment, litter etc) as it will determine the establishment of the microbiome and explain therefore why different results can be achieved depending on how studies are conXavière Rousseau Global Poultry Technical Manager AB Vista
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