Toward a decrease in dietary crude protein in broilers: amino acids adjustment considering both structural and functional roles, fine tuning of mineral profile, and energy:protein

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This research proposal focuses on optimizing the use of nitrogen (N) resources to ensure the sustainable development of poultry production that currently face significant environmental, economic and societal challenges. The general objective is to reduce N intake by optimizing its use by animals, by adjusting, as accurately as possible, the contribution to the needs of the animals to avoid reducing performance. This will in turn reduce the release of N into the environment. Preliminary results using meta-analysis tool allowed us identifying other dietary factors than essential amino acids that may affect the success of low crude protein (CP) strategies. This approach also revealed possible impact of broilers health while reducing CP. Based on this, in low CP strategies, the adjustment of other dietary components such as minerals, or even adding non essential amino acids (NEAA) with a functional role (e.g. glutamine) on enterocytes would improve animal health status. It is expected that these strategies support the reduction of antibiotics use, another important factor in broiler production sustainability. The research project will focus on growing chicken. Two objectives will be developed 1) reduction of dietary CP in growing chickens as a way to improve N efficiency without compromising growth performance, and assessing possible impact of health and 2) Estimation of broiler responses to essential amino acids (EAA) and NEAA on gut health. These objectives will validate and complete the results found in the meta-analysis.