Metabolic Profiling of Corn Silage

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Summary section for ENGAGE-LALLEMAND (21 lines) . Corn ensiling is based on the natural fermentation of plant water-soluble carbohydrates by lactic acid bacteria (LAB) under anaerobic conditions. The most important single factor that can influence the preservation efficiency of forage ensiling is the degree of anaerobiosis reached in the completed silo. The aerobic deterioration of silages is a significant problem for farm profitability and feed quality world-wide. All silages exposed to air deteriorate as a result of aerobic microbial activity during feedout. These losses could reach 70% of the stored dry matter in the peripheral areas top layer and near the sidewalls of the bunkers and are related to the depletion of the digestible carbohydrate and organic acid fractions. Spoilage of silage due to exposure to air is undesirable, due to the lower nutritive value and to the risk of negative effects on animal performance, which are also connected to the proliferation of potentially pathogenic or otherwise undesirable microorganisms and mycotoxin contamination The industrial partner LALLEMAND wishes to understand the biochemical factors that would minimize the risk of aerobic deterioration of corn silage caused by unwanted molds and bacteria, and the dynamics of corn silage fermentation in response to various inoculants such as lactic acid producing bacteria. Thus, the main focus of LALLEMAND is to obtain, at a given time during the initial phase of corn fermentation process, a snapshot of the biochemical changes (i.e., metabolic profiles) that occur during the initial phase of the fermentation process in response to various LAB inoculants. This approach will provide LALLEMAND information on the total biochemical composition or "silage metabolome" of a given sample at a given time. This holistic approach is attractive to the company since the high-throughput (HTP) detection and quantification of silage metabolites is not only cost- and time-effective, but highly reproducible.