Effects of arginine and guanidinoacetic acid supplementation with or without phenylalanine on performance and ascites susceptibility in cold-stressed broilers fed canola meal-based diet

Negin Delfani, Mohsen Daneshyar^*, Parviz Farhoomand, Younes Ali Alijoo, Sina Payvastegan, Gholamreza Najafi

¹Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran., Urmia 57153, Iran, Islamic Republic of.

^*Corresponding Author: Mohsen Daneshyar, E-mail: daneshyar_mohsen@yahoo.com.

© Copyright 2022 Korean Society of Animal Science and Technology. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Jan 19, 2022; Revised: Jun 06, 2022; Accepted: Aug 19, 2022

Published Online: Oct 21, 2022

Abstract

In order to evaluate the effects of ARG sources (ARG and GAA) and PHE supplementation on performance, susceptibility to ascites, intestinal morphology, and nutrient digestibility in the cold-stressed broilers fed a canola meal (CM)-based diet, a 2×2 factorial experiment with four treatments was conducted. The dietary treatments included CM-based diet + 2.57 g/kg ARG, CM-based diet + 2.57 g/kg ARG + 1.5 g/kg PHE, CM-based diet + 1.8 g/kg GAA and CM-based diet + 1.8 g/kg GAA + 1.5 g/kg PHE. The corn-CM diet without supplementation was used as a negative control (NC) group in the fifth treatment that excluded the factorial arrangement. The results showed that adding ARG to diets without PHE supplement increased (<italic>p</italic> < 0.05) feed intake. Also, birds fed diets containing ARG had higher (<italic>p</italic> < 0.05) body weight gain (BWG) compared to those fed GAA added diets. Supplementation of PHE improved (<italic>p</italic> < 0.05) the FCR compared to groups fed diets without added PHE. Further, ARG addition increased (<italic>p</italic> < 0.05) plasma nitric oxide (NO) concentration, carcass, breast and leg yields, duodenal, jejunal and ileal villus height (VH) to crypt depth (CD, and dry matter digestibility, while decreasing (<italic>p</italic> < 0.05) ascites mortality and right ventricle (RV) to total ventricle (TV) ratio compared to GAA added groups. Supplementation of PHE also declined susceptibility to ascites by reducing (<italic>p</italic> < 0.01) RV to TV ratio while increasing (<italic>p</italic> < 0.05) plasma NO level. The digestibility of ether extract also increased (<italic>p</italic> < 0.05) in broilers fed GAA supplemented diets versus those fed ARG added diets. The findings suggested that ARG may improve BWG and lower ascites incidence in broilers fed a diet based on CM under cold stress because of its antihypertensive effects. Moreover, the findings of this study demonstrated the importance of including PHE formulation in ARG-deficient diets to attenuate the adverse effects of cold stress on broilers. It was also concluded that GAA could be efficaciously used in cold-stressed broilers fed an ARG-deficient diet.

Keywords: Arginine; Ascites susceptibility; Canola meal; Guanidinoacetic acid; Performance; Phenylalanine