Exogenous alkaline phosphatases in improving growth, efficiency of nutrient utilization and gut fermentation in pigs

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Improving feed conversion efficiency while minimizing detrimental impacts on the environment is a major direction to improve limited profit margins in Ontario and the Canadian swine industry particularly when feed antimicrobials as growth promoters have now been banned in commercial weanling swine diets in Canada. It has been well documented that alkaline phosphatases (AP) are essential to detoxify endotoxins from pathogenic bacteria in the gut environment, thus maintaining gut functions in pigs. However, weanling pig gut endogenous AP activities are insufficient in playing such biological roles. Thus, exogenous supplemental AP need to be developed as gut modifiers to enhance gut digestive functions, improve gut fermentation, and increase growth performances in swine feeding. Furthermore, exogenous feed AP can modulate gut microbial balancing, thus potentially modulate and reduce biogenesis and fecal excretion of volatile odor-causing compounds such as skatole in pigs. The concept of using exogenous supplemental AP in swine nutrition has been reported; however, commercial applications of exogenous feed AP as novel exogenous feed enzymes and gut modifiers are yet to be established and approved by the government. Therefore, this proposed research project is: i) to investigate effects of dietary supplementation of optimal levels of exogenous feed AP on improving overall growth performances and digestive utilization of nutrients in weanling pigs fed typical Eastern and Western Canadian swine diets; and ii) to examine effects of feeding optimal levels of exogenous feed AP on overall growth performances, digestive utilization of nutrients and fecal excretion of volatile odor-causing compounds in growing-finishing pigs fed on typical Eastern and Western Canadian swine diets, respectively. Anticipated benefits for Canadian pork industry through conducting this proposed project will be achieved through facilitating the commercialization and applications of exogenous feed AP as a newly emerged effective gut modifier to improve overall growth performances, feed conversion and profit margins; and to reduce the negative environmental impacts of the fecal volatile odor-causing compounds from swine.