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Adapting Novel Nutritional Practices to Enhance Product Quality and Environmental...
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Adapting Novel Nutritional Practices to Enhance Product Quality and Environmental Sustainability in Ruminant Livestock Sector

A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Animal Nutrition".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 October 2024 | Viewed by 2578

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Ilias Giannenas

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Laboratory of Nutrition, School of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Interests: animal nutrition; health; antioxidants; feed additives; aromatic and medicinal plants; alternative feedstuffs with bioactive compounds
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Globally, the ruminant livestock sector is facing two major concerns: product quality and environmental impacts. In this context, novel feed ingredients will serve as tools to address these issues. Aromatic and medicinal plants are rich in bioactive molecules and able to reach considerable concentrations in the final product, offering health benefits to consumers. In addition, they can modify rumen fermentation processes and microbiota populations, leading to lower methane production and N losses, with possible environmental and economical profits. In addition, alternative feedstuffs with diminished cultivation needs and environmental costs, compared to soybean meal and other raw materials which dominate ruminant diets, are being introduced worldwide. For example, lupin seeds and hemp cake, along with various by-products, could serve as ecofriendly feeds in dairy ruminants as well as in beef cattle. This Special Issue will focus on new developments in ruminant nutrition, reducing methane and N losses, and the enhancement of active biomolecules in milk and meat, which will lead to superior quality livestock products and minimize environmental impacts.

Dr. Ilias Giannenas
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • animal nutrition
  • bioactive compounds
  • high-quality animal products
  • environmental burdens
  • green-house gas emissions

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 3094 KiB  
Article
Mitigating the Environmental Impacts from Pig and Broiler Chicken Productions: Case Study on a Citrus Extract Feed Additive
by Hoa Bui, Sekhou Hedaly Cisse, Mathilde Ceccaldi, Aurélie Perrin, Mohammed El Amine Benarbia and Pierre Chicoteau
Animals 2023, 13(23), 3702; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13233702 - 29 Nov 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1079
Abstract
The rapid expansion of the livestock production sector to meet the world population’s demand is posing a big challenge to environmental sustainability. Plant-based feed additives extracted from agro-food byproducts could potentially result in multiple outcomes: reducing food-processing wastes and improving animal growth performances, [...] Read more.
The rapid expansion of the livestock production sector to meet the world population’s demand is posing a big challenge to environmental sustainability. Plant-based feed additives extracted from agro-food byproducts could potentially result in multiple outcomes: reducing food-processing wastes and improving animal growth performances, hence mitigating environmental impacts of meat production chains. This presented study was carried out to assess the environmental impacts of the use of a commercial citrus extract feed additive (CEFA) in swine and broiler chicken farming. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to assess the impact of manufacturing and distributing one 25 kg bag of CEFA and its use in feed in broiler chicken and swine productions. With regards to CEFA manufacturing and distribution, results showed that most of the impact came from the production of CEFA ingredients, accounting for 70% of the impact generated. The remaining 30% effect was divided between transportation to the customer (25%), CEFA packaging (3%), and CEFA manufacturing and production loss (2%). When enlarging the scope, the use of the CEFA in pigs and broilers’ diets was shown to improve the measured environmental indicators, compared to such standard systems. Indeed, CEFA-added feeds have demonstrated enhanced growth performances, hence reducing the required amount of consumed feed to achieve the same level of growth. Consequently, this helped reduce environmental issues from animal feed ingredients’ agriculture. To be more specific, the use of one 25 kg bag of CEFA in feed at 250 g per ton of feed led to a reduction of 6 tons of CO2 equivalent (CO2 eq) emitted along the life cycle of poultry production and 5 tons in the case of fattening pigs. The inclusion of this CEFA in the diet also led to a reduction in the land use footprint by 0.7 hectares and reductions in water consumption by 201 m3 and 82 m3 for broiler chicken and swine production, respectively. The environmental performance assessment thus showed the interest in using this CEFA in swine and broiler chicken diets to mitigate the environmental impacts. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adapting Novel Nutritional Practices to Enhance Product Quality and Environmental Sustainability in Ruminant Livestock Sector)
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20 pages, 3978 KiB  
Article
Effects of Microorganisms on Growth Performance, Body Composition, Digestive Enzyme Activity, Intestinal Bacteria Flora and Antimicrobial Peptide (AMP) Content of Black Soldier Fly Larvae (Hermetia illucens)
by Yongqi Meng, Xiuxia Zhang, Zelong Zhang, Jiajun Li, Peihua Zheng, Juntao Li, Jiarui Xu, Jianan Xian and Yaopeng Lu
Animals 2023, 13(17), 2722; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13172722 - 26 Aug 2023
Viewed by 1190
Abstract
Escherichia coli (EC), Staphylococcus aureus (SA), Bacillus subtilis (BS), Rhodopseudomonas palustris (RP), Saccharomyces cerevisiae (SC) and Lactobacillus plantarum (LP) were selected as feed additives for black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) by tracking the growth performance, proximate composition, digestive ability and antibacterial peptides (AMPs) [...] Read more.
Escherichia coli (EC), Staphylococcus aureus (SA), Bacillus subtilis (BS), Rhodopseudomonas palustris (RP), Saccharomyces cerevisiae (SC) and Lactobacillus plantarum (LP) were selected as feed additives for black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) by tracking the growth performance, proximate composition, digestive ability and antibacterial peptides (AMPs) content in the first trial. Microorganism efficiency screening results showed that RP could improve growth performance, digestive ability and AMP content of H. illucens. Therefore, RP was selected to prepare the diets and was incorporated into diets for H. illucens at levels of 0 (R0), 1.22 × 106 (R1), 1.22 × 107 (R2), 1.22 × 108 (R3), 1.22 × 109 (R4) and 1.22 × 1010 (R5) CFU/g. After 5 d of feeding, larvae fed the R2-R5 diets had higher weight gain and specific growth rates. Different concentrations of RP had no significant effect on larval body composition. R4–R5 could improve the digestibility and expression of AMPs in larvae. Moreover, RP could significantly increase the abundance of Lactobacillus and Rhodopseudomonas and decrease the abundance of Proteus and Corynebacterium. Therefore, RP is superior to the other strains as a feed additive for H. illucens larvae, and we recommend the addition of 1.22 × 109–1.22 × 1010 CFU/g RP to promote the growth and AMP content of H. illucens. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adapting Novel Nutritional Practices to Enhance Product Quality and Environmental Sustainability in Ruminant Livestock Sector)
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