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Open Access
Copyright: The authors. This article is an open access
article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) which permits unrestricted use,
distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly
cited.
Original Research
9.
In vitro evaluation of sheep rumen
fermentation pattern after adding different levels
of eugenol – fumaric acid combinations -
T A M Baraka
and M A Abdl-Rahman
Vet World. 2012; 5(2): 110-117
doi:
10.5455/vetworld.201 2.110-117
Abstract
In vitro
gas production technique was used to evaluate the
effect of three different levels of eugenol +
fumaric acid combinations on rumen fermentation.
Rumen contents were collected from five rams
immediately after slaughtering and used for
preparation of inoculums of mixed rumen microbes
that were used in generation of five treatment
systems, negative control with no additives (T1),
fumaric acid 0.5 mg L–1 (T2) and fumaric acid 0.5
mg L–1 in combination with three different doses
of eugenol, 100, 200 and 400 mg L–1 (T3, T4 and T5
respectively). Incubations were conducted in
triplicates with gas production, pH, ammonia
nitrogen (NH3-N), total and fractional volatile
fatty acids (VFAs) concentrations, cellulase
activity, amount of substrate degraded, microbial
yield (YATP), fermentation efficiency (FE) and
VFAs utilization index (NGGR) were determined
after 24 hours of incubation. The results revealed
that, different levels of eugenol + fumaric acid
combinations were associated with decreased pH
value, NH3-N concentrations and methane production
and increased valeric and isovaleric acids molar
proportions. T3 and T4 were associated with
increased propionates at the expence of acetates
(low A/P), decreased methane production and
increased FE, microbial yield (YATP) and VFAs
utilization. In contrast, T5 showed decreased
total VFAs concentrations, cellulase activity, the
amount of substrate degraded, microbial mass
generated and VFAs utilization. In conclusion, the
authors recommend using 200 mg L–1 eugenol +
fumaric acid combination as an alternative for
antibiotic feed additives to optimize rumen
fermentation pattern. Further investigations are
required to apply this work in vivo experiments.
Keywords: Eugenol, Fermentation efficiency,
Fumaric acid, Rumen microbes.
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