Dietary protease improves growth performance, nutrient digestibility, and intestinal morphology of weaned pigs

Sangwoo Park; Jeong Jae Lee; Boung Mo Yang; Jin Ho Cho; Soyun Kim; Joowon Kang; Sejong Oh; Dong-Jun Park; Rider Perez-Maldonado; Jee-Yeon Cho; Il-Hun Park; Hyeun Bum Kim; Minho Song

doi:10.5187/jast.2020.62.1.21

Dietary protease improves growth performance, nutrient digestibility, and intestinal morphology of weaned pigs

J Anim Sci Technol. 2020 Jan;62(1):21-30. doi: 10.5187/jast.2020.62.1.21. Epub 2020 Jan 31.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Division of Animal and Dairy Science, Chungnam National University, Daejeon 34134, Korea.
² Division of Food and Animal Science, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju 28644, Korea.
³ Department of Animal Science, Chonnam National University, Gwangju 61186, Korea.
⁴ Korea Food Research Institute, Wanju 55365, Korea.
⁵ DSM Nutritional Products Asia Pacific, Mapletree Business City 117440, Singapore.
⁶ DSM Nutrition Korea Ltd., Seoul 06675, Korea.
⁷ Department of Animal Resources Science, Dankook University, Cheonan 31116, Korea.

Abstract

This study was conducted to evaluate effects of dietary protease (PR) on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, and intestinal morphology of weaned pigs. A total of 75 weaned pigs [7.06 ± 0.18 kg of average body weight (BW); 28 day old] were randomly allotted to 3 dietary treatments in a randomized complete block design (blocks = BW and sex): a diet based on corn and soybean meal to meet the requirement of crude protein (CP) as a positive control (PC; CP = 24.49%), a low protein diet as a negative control (NC; CP = 22.51%), and NC + 0.02% PR. The PR used in this study was a commercial product containing 75,000 protease units/g derived from Nocardiopsis prasina produced in Bacillus licheniformis. Pigs were fed the dietary treatments for 6 weeks and the diets containing 0.2% chromic oxide for the last week of this study. Blood, feces, ileal digesta, and ileum samples were collected from randomly selected two pigs in each pen on respective time points. Measurements were growth performance, apparent ileal digestibility (AID) and apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) of dry matter (DM), CP, and energy, frequency of diarrhea, packed cell volume (PCV), and ileal morphology of weaned pigs. Pigs fed PC and PR had higher (p < 0.05) final BW, average daily gain (ADG), and gain to feed ratio (G:F) during overall experimental period than those fed NC. Pigs fed PC and PR had higher (p < 0.05) AID or ATTD of DM, CP, or energy than those fed NC. Moreover, pigs fed PR had higher ratio between villus height and crypt depth (p < 0.05) and number of goblet cells (p < 0.05) than those fed NC. Addition of PR decreased (p < 0.05) frequency of diarrhea for the first two weeks after weaning compared with PC and NC. In addition, pigs fed PR had lower (p < 0.05) PCV on d 14 after weaning than those fed PC and NC. In conclusion, addition of PR in nursery diets with a low protein level significantly improved growth performance, nutrient digestibility, and intestinal morphology of weaned pigs.

Keywords: Growth performance; Intestinal morphology; Nutrient digestibility; Protease; Weaned pigs.