Betaine improves growth performance by increasing digestive enzymes activities, and enhancing intestinal structure of weaned piglets
Introduction
Betaine, the trimethyl derivative of glycine, is a stable natural compound that is widely distributed in bacteria, fungi, plants and animals (de Zwart et al., 2003; Fernandez-Figares et al., 2008). Betaine is an efficient methyl donor because of its three liable methyl groups that can be transferred to synthesis carnitine and creatine (Kidd and Garlich, 1997), which links betaine with lipid metabolism. Interest in betaine as a feed additive in pig diets was initiated by Cadogan et al. (1993) and betaine is used as carcass modifier to reduce the content of fat and to increase the percentage of lean carcass in animal practice (Eklund et al., 2005). Another usage of betaine is to spare the expenditure of choline and methionine to save feed cost (Siljander-Rasi et al., 2003). Meanwhile, betaine is also a potent organic osmoprotectant due to its zwitterion character, which plays an important role of osmoregulation in bacteria (Pichereau et al., 1999), plants (Xing and Rajashekar, 2001), marines (Clarke et al., 1994) and various tissues and organs of mammals (Burg et al., 2007). The contents in intestinal lumen vary dramatically, especially during the process of digestion and absorption of nutrients, the intestinal epithelial cells have to undergo fluctuating osmolarity (William, 2017). The intestinal epithelial cells control the exchange of water, inorganic ions, nutrients and macromolecules between plasma and the intestinal lumen. As such, it is of profound significance to regulate the osmolarity in small intestine. However, less attention is paid on the osmoregulation role of betaine. Eklund et al. (2005) demonstrated that poultry diets supplemented with betaine could attenuate the osmotic stress of intestinal epithelial cells to promote the digestion and absorption of nutrients. Kettunen et al. (2001b) reported that betaine administration could alleviate the osmotic disorders and improve the performance of chickens under coccidian-infection. Nevertheless, there are few studies exploring the osmoregulation role of betaine in the intestine of swine. Hence, we investigated the effect of betaine on nutrient digestion, digestive enzymes activities, and intestinal structures of weaned piglets in relationship with the osmoregulation role of betaine.
Section snippets
Animals and experimental design
This study was performed strictly according to the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Zhejiang University (Hangzhou, China). A total of 150 crossbred weaning piglets (Duroc × Landrace × Yorkshire), with an average initial body weight of 8.52 ± 0.26 kg and age of 39 day, were randomly allocated to three dietary treatments, each of which was replicated five times with ten piglets per replicate/pen (five male piglets and five female piglets in each replicate/pen). The dietary
Growth performance (Table 2)
Supplementation of betaine in the diet linearly increased final body weight and ADG (P < 0.05), linearly decreased diarrhea rate (P < 0.05), and linearly improved FCR (P < 0.05). Dietary supplementation of 2500 mg/kg betaine was more effective than 1250 mg/kg in decreasing the diarrhea rate of weaned piglets. There was no statistical significance for ADFI (linear and quadratic, P > 0.05) or visceral organ development (linear and quadratic, P > 0.05, Table 3) among groups.
Apparent total tract digestibility (Table 4)
Betaine supplementation
Discussion
Various studies reported that dietary betaine supplementation could increase the ADG and improve FCR in swine and poultry (Sales, 2011). In our study, dietary betaine supplementation linearly increased ADG, decreased diarrhea rate and improved FCR. Yu et al. (2004) and Huang et al. (2008) both reported that dietary supplementation of betaine (1000 mg/kg and 1500 mg/kg in Yu; 1250 mg/kg in Huang) could increase the body gain and feed efficiency in pigs. Moreover, it is reported that betaine
Conclusion
Betaine increased digestive enzyme activities and enhanced intestinal structure of weaned piglets. The protective effect of betaine on digestive enzymes lies in the enhanced affinity of digestive enzymes to the substrates. The changes elicited by betaine were dose dependent. Performance was enhanced similarly at both doses tested while 1250 mg/kg betaine was more effective at improving the gut structure and 2500 mg/kg betaine was more effective at enhancing digestive enzyme activities, crude
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Haichao Wang: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Writing - original draft. Sisi Li: Formal analysis, Resources, Validation, Visualization. Shuyi Xu: Formal analysis, Validation. Jie Feng: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Supervision, Writing - review & editing.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Zhejiang Provincial Key Research and Development Program (2019C02051, 2015C02022) and National Key Technologies R&D Program of China (2016YFD0501201).
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