Acta Veterinaria et Zootechnica Sinica ›› 2022, Vol. 53 ›› Issue (10): 3500-3510.doi: 10.11843/j.issn.0366-6964.2022.10.022

• ANIMAL NUTRITION AND FEEDS • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Effects of Aspartic Acid Supplementation in Low-protein Diets on Growth Performance and Meat Quality Traits of Pigs from Weaning to Fattening

GUAN Peng1,2, WANG Chenyu1,2, HU Xian1,2, HE Liuqin1,2, LI Jianzhong1*, LI Tiejun2,3*   

  1. 1. Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Intestinal Function and Regulation, College of Life Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha 410081, China;
    2. Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Nutritional Physiology and Metabolic Process, Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changsha 410125, China;
    3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
  • Received:2022-01-11 Online:2022-10-23 Published:2022-10-26

Abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of aspartic acid supplementation in low-protein diets on growth performance, blood biochemical indexes and free amino acids, apparent digestibility of nutrients and meat quality traits in pigs from weaning to fattening. Twenty healthy three-way cross (Duroc×Landrace×Yorkshire) weaned piglets at 45 days old with similar body weight ((10.93±0.79) kg) were selected and randomly divide into two groups with 10 replicates in each group, 1 pig per replicate, single piglet pen rearing. The experiment lasted for 84 days. The control group was fed with low-protein corn-soybean meal basal diet, and the test group was fed with basal diet supplemented with 0.5% aspartic acid. The results were showed as follows:1) The addition of aspartic acid significantly increased the average daily gain (P<0.05) and extremely significantly reduced the feed to gain ratio (P<0.01) of pigs at the weaning stage, but had no significant effect on the growth performance in the fattening and growth stages (P>0.05);2) The addition of aspartic acid significantly increased the serum ALB level and ALP activity in the weaning stage (P<0.05), but there was no significant effect on the blood biochemical indexes in the growth and fattening stages (P>0.05); 3) The addition of aspartic acid significantly reduced the content of Pro, Met, Thr, Asp, His, Tyr in the serum (P<0.05) and increased the level of Lys (P<0.01) at the weaning stage, the content of Asp and Lys in the serum during the growth stage and the content of Asp and Thr in the fattening stage were significantly reduced (P<0.05), while there were no significant effect on the content of other amino acids (P>0.05); 4) Aspartic acid treatment extremely significantly increased the apparent digestibility of total energy, crude protein, crude fat, crude ash and crude fiber of fattening pigs (P<0.01); 5) Aspartic acid treatment effectively increased the cooked meat rate of pigs (P<0.01) and the mRNA expression level of MyHC1 in the longissimus dorsi muscle (P<0.05). The above results showed that the addition of 0.5% aspartic acid to low-protein diets throughout the breeding process could effectively improve the growth performance of pigs at the weaning stage, and beneficially promote the development of muscle fibers in the later stage so as to improve meat quality traits.

Key words: aspartate, pigs, apparent nutrient digestibility, meat quality traits

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