Recently, Echinacea purpurea and its extracts have gained much interest due to their improvement on meat quality, but little information is available on the application of the purified Echinacea purpurea polysaccharide (4-O-methyl-glucuronoarabinoxylan, 4OMG). Thus, this trial aimed at assessing the effects of dietary supplementation of 4OMG on growth performance, thigh meat quality and small intestine development of broilers. A total of 240 1-day-old female broiler chicks were randomly distributed to four groups with three replicates of 20 within each group. Each group received either 0, 15, 20 or 25 g 4OMG/kg DM of diet. During the entire experiment, broilers had ad libitum access to water and feed, and the feed intake was recorded daily. All broilers were weighed before and end of the experiment. For each group, three pens with a total of 20 broilers were randomly selected to slaughter after 30 days. Increasing dietary supplementation of 4OMG linearly increased final live weight and daily body weight gain (P = 0.013) of broilers, Gain-to-Feed ratio (P < 0.001), muscle pH (P = 0.024) and redness (P = 0.001), but decreased drip loss (P = 0.033), shear force value (P = 0.004) and hardness (P = 0.022) of the thigh meat. Broilers fed diet with higher 4OMG had greater weight index, villus height and ratio of villus height to crypt depth in both duodenum and jejunum. These results indicated that increasing dietary supplementation of 4OMG was beneficial for growth performance, meat quality and development of the small intestine of broilers.

中文翻译：

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日粮添加4-O-甲基葡萄糖醛酸阿拉伯木聚糖对雌性鹧鸪肉鸡生长性能、大腿肉质和小肠发育的影响

最近，紫锥菊及其提取物因其对肉质的改善而引起了广泛的兴趣，但关于纯化的应用的信息很少紫锥菊多糖（4-O-甲基-葡萄糖醛酸阿拉伯木聚糖，4OMG）。因此，本试验旨在评估日粮添加 4OMG 对肉鸡生长性能、大腿肉质和小肠发育的影响。将 240 只 1 日龄雌性肉仔鸡随机分为四组，每组 20 只重复 3 次。每组接受 0、15、20 或 25 g 4OMG/kg DM 的饮食。在整个实验过程中，肉鸡可以随意饮水和采食，每天记录采食量。在实验之前和结束时对所有肉鸡称重。每组随机选择三栏共20只肉鸡，30天后出栏。增加 4OMG 的膳食补充线性增加最终活体重和每日体重增加（磷= 0.013) 肉鸡，增重比 (磷< 0.001), 肌肉 pH (磷= 0.024) 和发红 (磷= 0.001)，但滴水损失减少 (磷= 0.033), 剪力值 (磷= 0.004) 和硬度 (磷= 0.022) 的大腿肉。饲喂高 4OMG 日粮的肉鸡在十二指肠和空肠的体重指数、绒毛高度和绒毛高度与隐窝深度的比值都更高。这些结果表明，增加日粮添加 4OMG 有利于肉鸡的生长性能、肉质和小肠的发育。