lyufangxinblog-blog

[lyufangxinblog-blog]

#It was informative to read your blog on duckweed as an alternative of animal feed. Since I am researching on the topic of Wooden breast chicken, a muscle disease occurs on broiler chicken due to fast-growing and high feed efficiency, which has a connection to the feed of broiler.

The previous literature indicated that it is possible to mitigate the wooden breast occurrence by modifying the feed formula, and the composition of nutrient in the feed is one of the important factors. In your blog, you mentioned the high amino acid content in duckweed attracted my attention. By further looking into the research on amino acid content composition, I found that the arginine-to-lysine ratio in some species of duckweed (especially in S. polyrhiza) is significantly high1, while research shows that higher arginine-to-lysine ratio in broiler’s feed is effective to decrease the wooden breast happening2. These two sources of information inspired me to an idea that appropriate proportion of duckweed can be a good candidate of broiler feed formula to improve the broiler chicken meat quality.

Additionally, I noticed that your blog mentioned the drawbacks of heavy metal residue in the duckweed may cause health issue to the animal even to human after consuming the animal, which is indeed a challenge to the application. While from the review of Sońta et al., the heavy metal residue can be controlled by the growing condition, which means that one may use nature water, household or livestock waste water to produce duckweed as long as the heavy metal content is removed or limited to an acceptable level3. Therefore, the duckweed might become a promising feed after systematic breeding methods being developed.

To sum up, it is really exciting to discover economic ways to improve the harmony of ecosystem. However, continuous efforts, not only from scientists but from every individual, are needed to reach the delicate balance among human, animals and environment.#---by Fangxin LYU

 reference

1.    Zampiga M, Soglia F, Petracci M, Meluzzi A, Sirri F. Effect of different arginine-to-lysine ratios in broiler chicken diets on the occurrence of breast myopathies and meat quality attributes. Poult Sci. 2019;98(6):2691-2697. doi:10.3382/ps/pey608

2.    Petracci M, Soglia F, Madruga M, Carvalho L, Ida E, Estévez M. Wooden-Breast, White Striping, and Spaghetti Meat: Causes, Consequences and Consumer Perception of Emerging Broiler Meat Abnormalities: Emerging broiler meat abnormalities…. Compr Rev Food Sci Food Saf. 2019;18(2):565-583. doi:10.1111/1541-4337.12431

3.    Sońta M, Rekiel A, Batorska M. Use of Duckweed (Lemna L.) in Sustainable Livestock Production and Aquaculture – A Review. Ann Anim Sci. 2019;19(2):257-271. doi:10.2478/aoas-2018-0048

Duckweed: the future of animal nutrition?

In a time of increasing water pollution and a shortage of agricultural land, a plant like duckweed may be the future. Lemna minor or duckweed is a very protein-rich water plant. Its protein content can rise to 35-45% dry matter, making it a potential candidate to replace the current soybean meal as food for cattle.

Additionally, duckweed has water purification properties. This is of course another great advantage of Lemna minor. The plant could therefore be grown on waters that need purification, which makes it a space-saving alternative to the food that is currently used for farm animals and is also beneficial for the environment. The space-saving aspect in particular is often not taken into account. However, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), land for livestock feed production accounts for 33% of total agricultural land.

This small plant could now tackle two of the biggest current problems on its own. When I now say that these benefits can also reinforce each other, it becomes almost too good to be true. However, the more polluted the water is, the more proteins the plant will produce. This is because the plant will use the contamination, mostly ammonium, as a nutrient to produce proteins.

Now, we have to put this all into perspective. There is without doubt a reason why this plant is not yet used for this application. Since duckweed uses the pollution in the water as a nutrient, there may also be substances present in the plant that should not be, and could be toxic for both humans and animals. This is what is currently being researched: does duckweed grown on polluted waters contain heavy metals (e.g. cadmium, lead,…)?

The conclusion is that research into duckweed is certainly a good start. The plant has a lot of potential, and even if it turns out that duckweed is not a suitable replacement for the current animal feed, it is valuable that scientists are still working on finding environmentally friendly, space-saving replacements. Alternatives are always welcome.

[lyufangxinblog-blog]

Cheap and Tasty Chicken: A Hard Trade-off

Are you a big fan of all junk food with fried chicken? Do you prefer chicken for its nutritious value and reasonable price? If so, you are contributing to the growing consumption trend of chicken worldwide, and somehow, making the poor broiler chicken suffer.

The blowing market of chicken forces the farm holders, racking their brains, to meet the need of this popular muscle product. That’s why fast-growing broiler chicken are selected, which reaches market weight of 3 to 4 kg by 6 to 8 weeks post-hatch(Abasht et al. 2019). This intensive and exhausting chicken raising system can cause several muscle diseases, namely myopathies, and damage both eating quality and nutritional quality of chicken.

One of the muscle diseases of broiler chicken is called Wooden Breast Diseases (WBD), which can be recognized by both color and texture changes. For the color changes, the WB chicken breast shows discoloration in both fresh condition (brighter and yellower) and cooked condition (darker, redder, and yellower) of superficial layer. For the texture, WB chicken tends to be harder, denser, chewier, crunchier and more fibrous than normal chicken breasts(Dalle Zotte et al. 2017).

Is it harmful to eat wooden breast chicken? Actually no. But although no harmful chemical can be found in myopathies breast muscles, higher fat content and protein oxidation products can be reckoned as potential drawbacks(Tasoniero et al. 2016).

With the rising awareness of consumers, both scientists and food manufacturers are trying to seek solutions to WBD in recent years. Instead of a thorough approach to tackle WBD, most existing methods can only alleviate WBD by adapting the feed formula of broiler chicken. Or, just try to make WBD meat tastier by post processing (make them into chicken balls, chicken soup can…)(Petracci et al. 2019).

Scientists are still on the way to figure out the complete picture of WBD’s mechanism through proteomics and metabolomics (in case you don’t know, proteomics and metabolomics are just fancy things to study genome). But before scientists find out a ‘silver bullet’, would you, as a fan of chicken product, pay more for slow growth chicken? How can we compromise between loss of natural taste and better fulfilled consumption? Is it possible to establish a win-win cooperation between chicken and human? These questions might linger in your mind for a while when enjoying yummy chicken next time.