Dietary glutamine,glutamic acid and nucleotide supplementation accelerate carbon turnover(δ^(13)C)on stomach of weaned piglets

The use of stable isotope analysis as a tool for characterization of carbon turnover(δ^(13)C) in piglet's tissues by tracing its feeding system has drawn attention. Thus, this study aimed at evaluating the influence of dietary glutamine, glutamic acid and nucleotides supplementation on carbon turnover in fundic-stomach region of weaned piglets at an average age of 21 days. The diets consisted of additive-free diet — control(C); 1% glutamine(G); 1% glutamic acid(GA) and 1% nucleotides(Nu). At weaning day(day 0: baseline), 3 piglets were slaughtered to quantify the δ^(13)C of stomach. The remaining 120 piglets were blocked by weight and sex, randomly assigned to pens with 3 piglets slaughtered per treatment at days 1,2,4, 5,7,9,13.20.27 and 49 after weaning in order to verify the fundic-stomach isotopic composition by treatments.Samples were analyzed in terms of ^(13)C/^(12)C ratio by mass spectrometry and converted to relative isotopic enrichment values(δ^(13)C ‰) used to plot the first order exponential curves over time using OriginPro 8.0 software. The inclusion of glutamine, glutamate and nucleotides in piglet's diets has accelerated the carbon turnover in stomach during the post-weaning period, demonstrating also that glutamate has guaranteed fastest 13 C incorporation rate on fundic-stomach region and pH-lowering. Besides that, stable isotopes technique(δ^(13)C) has proved to be an important methodology to determine the time-scales at which piglets shift among diets with different isotopic values, characterizing the trophic effects of additives and the phenotypic flexibility of stomach.

Nutritional evaluation of integral cassava root silages for growing pigs

The experiment aimed at determining the nutritional value of integral cassava root silages with yogurt as inoculant or wastewater(manipueira) by liquid addition ensiling process. Eighteen crossbred piglets(Large White x Landrace), castrated males with an initial average weight of 50 kg were allocated in metabolism cages throughout 11-day trial duration(6 days for animal's adaptation to the cages and to the experimental diets, and 5 days of urine and faeces collection). The experimental design was a randomized block arrangement with 3 treatments and 6 replicates: basal diet(100%); mixture composed of75% basal diet and 25% integral cassava root silage with yogurt as inoculant; a mixture composed of 75%of basal diet and 25% integral cassava root silage with wastewater. The silages with wastewater and yogurt presented the following values of apparent digestibility of dry matter 89.96% and 90.01%,apparent digestibility of crude protein of 60.67% and 66.43%, apparent digestibility of gross energy of90.43% and 91.48%, gross energy metabolizability coefficients of 87.88% and 88.93%, digestible energy values of 3,705 and 3,783 kcal/kg on a dry matter(DM) basis, and metabolizable energy values of 3,600 and 3,676 kcal/kg DM, respectively. The results have demonstrated that integral cassava root silages with wastewater or yogurt have a high nutritional value and can be used as an alternative energy source in growing pig's diets.