Effects of plant extracts and essential oils as feed supplements on quality and microbial traits of rabbit meat

Abstract

The effects of dietary supplementation with onion, cranberry and strawberry extracts and essentials oils on meat quality were analysed. Five groups of 48 Grimaud female weaned rabbits received the supplemented or the control ration; the experimental unit was a cage of 6 rabbits. Each experimental diet contained 10 ppm of added active ingredients. Rabbits were fed with the experimental diets for 4 wk before determining slaughter and carcass traits and determining the pH at 1 and 24 h post mortem (pHu) of the Longissimus dorsi (LD) and the Biceps femoris muscle, left and right, respectively. Cooking loss, drip loss and L*, a* and b* colour parameters were obtained for the right LD and for ground meat and antioxidant status (TBARS, DNPH, Folin Ciocalteu) was measured. Only the pHu of the LD muscle for the strawberry supplemented group was significantly lower when compared to the control group (P=0.04). However, we note that for the pH of the LD, the average was less than 6 for the meat of animals that received a diet enriched in polyphenols, compared to the control group. Plant extract supplementation did not influence meat quality traits, growth performance or oxidative stability. However, under aerobic and anaerobic conditions, our results indicate that dietary supplementation with extracts rich in polyphenols, especially with essential oils, had a small but sporadic positive effect in reducing bacterial microflora compared to the control group (P<0.05). In conclusion, plant extracts and essential oils can be used in a rabbit diet without adverse effects on performance and meat quality traits. This effect could be optimised by investigating higher doses.

The effects of hydrolysed sorghum on growth performance and meat quality of rabbits

“…However, in rabbits supplemented with chia (Meineri et al, 2010), the observed LL pH (5.65) was lower compared to that observed in T2 group (6.06) of the present study. The pH values obtained by Kone et al (2016) for LL and BF meat from rabbits supplemented with plant extracts and essential oils were similar to those observed for the T2 group in the present study, but L* and a* values were lower. Finally, meat composition results in the current study were similar to those obtained by Rotolo et al (2013), Dalle Zotte et al (2015, Cardinali et al (2015), and Méndez-Zamora et al (2016) evaluating natural additives.…”

“…These findings suggest that hydrolysed sorghum treatment does not affect carcass traits and meat composition. On the other hand, the CL of LL for the T2 treatment was higher than that for Pannon Large and Hungarian Giant rabbit genotypes fed commercial diets (Dalle Zotte et al, 2015), but was similar to those obtained with Grimaud rabbits (Kone et al, 2016). The WHC values obtained by Ariño et al (2006) were similar to those observed in the T2 group.…”

“…Feed intake in that study was increased at 42 d (151 g/d), in comparison to the T2 group at 49 d (95.31 g/d) of the current study, and was not affected by the treatment. Previous results suggested that the addition of sorghum hydrolysed with WRF in the diet could improve performance traits compared to commercial enzymes, native plants or probiotics (Cachaldora et al, 2004;Abdel-Aziz et al, 2015;Kone et al, 2016).…”

Physiological and Immunological Effects of Rosemary Essential Oil in Growing Rabbit Diets

“…Furthermore, lipid oxidation adversely impacts the meat quality as it causes the formation of some toxic compounds and malondialdehyde (MDA). The latter has been exhibited to contrarily influence human's health (Koné et al, 2016;Cardinali et al, 2015). Natural feed addition derived from plants, for example, the essential oils have been suggested as alternative feed supplements in animal production for improving growth performance and the meat quality characteristics (Bento et al, 2013;Simitzis & Deligeorgis, 2011).…”

Aromatic plants in the feeding of rabbits and their effect on meat

“…El empleo de diversos aceites esenciales de especias y hierbas para alimentar animales tiene la finalidad de mejorar la estabilidad oxidativa de la carne (Kone et al, 2016), disminuir sus cargas microbianas (Soultos et al, 2009) y mejorar su productividad (Cardinali et al, 2015). En el caso de los aceites esenciales de ruda, se han caracterizado sus compuestos volátiles, Franca y Nascimento (2015), encontraron que los principales compuestos volátiles son 2-nonanona y 2-undecanona; reportan actividad antimicrobiana contra bacterias Gram positivas y negativas.…”