The results suggest that JA had beneficial effects on immunity, blood metabolites, intestinal morphometry and hindgut fermentation of rats.

Urolithiasis is a common problem in both ruminants and non-ruminants and nutrition plays a significant role in predisposing urolithiasis. The nutritional factors mainly influence urinary constituents and pH, which affect stone nucleation and growth. While surgery can render a patient stone-free, non-operative treatment modalities are required to prevent and reduce the risk of recurrent urolithiasis. Moreover, long-term pharmacological therapy and its potential side effects often lead to subsequent failure. In this regard, nutritional management is the best preventive strategy against urolithiasis.

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The complex interactions between diet, intestinal mucosa and intestinal microbiota affect health status in livestock and poultry. Various approaches have been tried to exploit this relationship for achieving maximum health benefits and supplementation of prebiotics constitutes one of them. Now a days prebiotics have become news mainly as an alternative to probiotics, which are difficult to handle in foodstuffs, but whose benefits to gut health are well established. Commercially available prebiotics are mostly inulin, fructo-oligosaccharides, mannan-oligosaccharides, galacto-oligosaccharides, transgalacto-oligosaccharides, lactulose and oligochitosan, etc. Prebiotics selectively stimulate the growth of Bifidobacterium sp., Lactobacillus sp. and certain butyrate producing bacteria and suppress the growth of toxogenic Escherichia coli, Clostridium perfringens, Streptococcus sp., peptococci, bacilli, Staphylococcus sp., Salmonella enteritidis, Campylobacter sp., bacteriodaeceae, pseudomonad, yeast and mould. Dietary supplementation of prebiotics improve a plethora of gut health attributes like hindgut fermentation, gut mucosal integrity, lipid and glucose homeostasis, mineral bio-availability and immune response in livestock and poultry owing to which many feed and pharma industries have been established. Their inclusion in diet can also suppress boar taint, control faecal odour, prevent colon cancer and reduce infestation of several parasites such as Ascaris sp., Trichuris sp. and Oesophagostomum dentatum. Their satietogenic effect results from decline in ghrelin secretion which in turn regulates body weight gain in obese animals. Prebiotics may eventually replace the role of antibiotics as growth stimulants in fishery, poultry and animal husbandry sectors. Because of all these multitude of benefits, inclusion of prebiotics in basal diet should be taken into consideration while preparing formula feed for livestock and poultry.

Four fistulated adult Murrah buffaloes were fed on a basal diet consisting of wheat straw and concentrate mixture in a 4 × 4 Latin square design to study the effects of feeding plants containing secondary metabolites on rumen metabolites and methanogen diversity. The four groups were Control (no additive), Mix-1 (ajwain oil and lemon grass oil in a 1 : 1 ratio @ 0.05% of dry matter intake), Mix-2 (garlic and soapnut in a 2 : 1 ratio @ 2% of dry matter intake) and Mix-3 (garlic, soapnut, harad and ajwain in a 2 : 1 : 1 : 1 ratio @ 1% of dry matter intake). In each phase of 30 days’ duration, after 19 days of feeding, rumen liquor was sampled for two consecutive days at 0, 2, 4, 6 and 8 h post-feeding, whereas rumen content was sampled at 0 h feeding. The pH of the rumen liquor was recorded at every collection and then the rumen liquor of every collection was pooled day-wise and animal-wise. These pooled samples were used for estimation of rumen metabolites like ammonia, lactic acid and volatile fatty acids. Microscopic counting of protozoa was done in both 0 h and pooled samples of rumen liquor. Rumen contents collected from different locations of rumen were processed for enzyme estimation. The rumen contents were squeezed and the liquid portion was used for DNA isolation, which was further processed to determine methanogen diversity. Daily intake of feed was similar (P > 0.05) in all the four groups. The ammonia-N concentration and ciliate protozoa population were reduced significantly in the treatment groups supplemented with additives. Rumen pH, lactic acid, volatile fatty acids and enzyme activities were not affected (P > 0.05) by feeding of any of these additives. Methanogenic diversity comparison was made between the Control and Mix-1 group. The basic local alignment search tool (BLAST) analysis of the 133 (44 from the Control group and 89 from the Mix-1 group) sequences showed similarity of the sequences of rumen archaea by up to 97% to the known sequences of rumen methanogens. The sequences with minimum length of 750 bp were selected for phylogenetic analysis. Per cent identity of these sequences with that of the available nearest neighbour as calculated by MEGA 5.03 software showed identity of the clones in the range of 88–97%. The clones were similar with Methanobrevibacter smithii ATCC 35061, uncultured Methanobrevibacter sp. clone MEME95 and M. ruminantium M1. Overall, feeding of any of these feed additives to fistulated buffaloes did not affect feed intake, rumen pH, or rumen metabolites except ammonia and enzyme profile. Methanogen diversity showed the possibility of Methanobrevibacter as the major methanogen in buffalo rumen liquor.

Livestock production is thought to be adversely affected by detrimental effects of extreme climatic conditions. Consequently, adaptation, mitigation and amelioration of detrimental effects of extreme climates have played a major role in combating the climatic impact in livestock production. While measures to reduce the growth of greenhouse gas emissions are an important response to the threat of climate change, adaptation to climate change will also form a necessary part of the response. The salient adaptation strategies are developing less sensitive breeds, improving water availability, improving animal health, promoting women empowerment, developing various policy issues, establishing early warning systems and developing suitable capacity building programmes for different stakeholders. Developing adaptation strategies is therefore an important part of ensuring that countries are

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