Summary: Nutrition, gut responses, and pig performance

Milena Saqui-Salces, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Animal Science, University of Minnesota, St. Paul

The gastrointestinal tract (GI) is a major player in animal performance and its responses, in general referred to as gut health, involve the cross-talk of the intestinal epithelium with luminal stimuli (diet, drugs, nutritional and anti-nutritional compounds, commensal and pathogenic microbiota) that result in changes in immune response, metabolism, and cell function. Although it is well accepted that the nutritional requirements for a healthy GI tract are defined by the developmental and health state of a pig and its environmental conditions; it is unclear what the specific indicators of a desired or positive gut response are.

For years, the swine industry has explored dietary ingredients and supplements to increase performance and reduce cost in feeding trials with unpredictable and sometimes contradictory results. The current economic challenges added to the need of alternatives to grow-promoting antibiotics make urgent the need to improve our understanding of how the gut works to predict and properly test responses to new supplements and diet ingredients. In this presentation, we will revise the basic dynamics of the intestinal epithelium and their significance for animal performance. We will also discuss the current knowledge on the pig’s immune response to luminal stimuli, and the approaches to measure those responses.