Effects of dietary supplementation of 4-O-methyl-glucuronoarabinoxylan on growth performance, thigh meat quality and development of small intestine in female Partridge-Shank broilers

Recently,Echinacea purpureaand its extracts have gained much interest due to their improvement on meat quality, but little information is available on the application of the purifiedEchinacea purpureapolysaccharide (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.