This experiment investigated the effects of wheat bran fermented with Trichoderma pseudokoningii (FWB) on growth performance, intestinal morphology and the incidence of non-specific pathological lesions in broilers. In vitro experimental results showed that cellulase and xylananse activity of fermented wheat bran reached its peak at day 4 and solid-state fermentation (SSF) enhanced the reducing sugar content. In addition, the possibility of Trichoderma adhering to the broiler's crop epitheliums was also discovered. A total of 180 day-old Ross 308 male broilers were randomly distributed into one of the three dietary groups until 35 d of age: basal diet (control), 10% of basal diet replaced with wheat bran (10% WB) or 10% of diet replaced with fermented wheat bran (10% FWB). Results showed that 10% FWB group had lower feed consumption than the others, but improved feed conversion ratio (FCR) for starter phase (1 to 21 d) when compared to the control group. Furthermore, 10% FWB group had significantly increased villus height and villus height/crypt depth ratio in the ileum compared to the control group. Coliform bacteria count in the ileum was lower in the 10% WB group than the control, however, there were no differences between the 10% WB and 10% FWB treatment groups in the C. perfringens count. There were no morphological changes or incidences of non-specific pathological lesions in the 10% FWB group. These results suggested that replacing 10% of a basal diet with fermented wheat bran could not only improve growth performance but also provide optimal intestinal morphology in broilers.

2018) Effects of dietary supplementation of Trichodermapseudokoningii fermented enzyme powder on growth performance, intestinal morphology, microflora and serum antioxidantive status in broiler chickensABSTRACT This study was conducted to evaluate the dietary supplementation of Trichoderma pseudokoningii enzyme powder (EP) and its effect on the growth performance, intestinal morphology and antioxidative status of broilers. In vitro experiments showed that xylanase and cellulase activities of EP were 487.96 ± 14.14 U/g and 18.55 ± 0.54 U/g, respectively. Total phenolic and ferulic acid content was 4.79 ± 0.35 mg GAE/g DW and 4.38 ± 0.32 lM/g DW, respectively. A total of 240 d-old Ross 308 male broiler chicks were randomly subjected to one of four treatments, namely diets supplemented with dry EP at 0% (control), 0.1%, 0.2% or 0.4% for 35d. Results showed that in the starter phase (1-21 d), the EP supplemented groups had improved body weight, weight gain and FCR compared to the control group. The villus:crypt ratio of both jejunum and ileum in all EP-treated groups was significantly higher than that of the control group. When testing serum antioxidant activity, results showed that 0.2% and 0.4% EP supplementation significantly increased superoxide dismutase activity in both the finisher phase and the overall experimental period. In addition, catalase activity was elevated in all EP supplemented groups in both the finisher phase and throughout the experimental period. 0.1% EP seemed to have no effect during the starter period. Serum malondialdehyde concentration was not affected by EP supplementation. These results suggest that EP is potential feed additive in terms of improving broiler performance and enhancing antioxidative status, while also providing an optimal intestinal environment. ARTICLE HISTORY

A new clade, Trichoderma formosa, secretes eliciting plant response-like 1 (Epl1), a small peptide elicitor that stimulates plant immunity. Nicotiana benthamiana pretreated with Epl1 for 3 days developed immunity against Tomato mosaic virus (ToMV) infection. The transcriptome profiles of T. formosa and N. benthamiana were obtained by deep sequencing; the transcript of Epl1 is 736 nt in length and encodes a 12-kDa peptide. Identifying critical genes in Epl1-mediated immunity was challenging due to high similarity between the transcriptome expression profiles of Epl1-treated and ToMV-infected N. benthamiana samples. Therefore, an efficient bioinformatics data mining approach was used for high-throughput transcriptomic assays in this study. We integrated gene-to-gene network analysis into the ContigViews transcriptome database, and genes related to jasmonic acid and ethylene signaling, salicylic acid signaling, leucine-rich repeats, transcription factors, and histone variants were hubs in the gene-to-gene networks. In this study, the Epl1 of T. formosa triggers plant immunity against various pathogen infections. Moreover, we demonstrated that high-throughput data mining and gene-to-gene network analysis can be used to identify critical candidate genes for further studies on the mechanisms of plant immunity.