Studies On The Bioactivity Of Alfalfa And The Influence Factors To Its Flavonoids And Saponins

Alfalfa is a major legume forage crop. In China alfalfa has been served as a folk medicine used to be in the treatment of cough, indigestion, gravel and so on. Now the amount of output of it is about more than 2000 ton per year. The studies on development of it are now manly the quality of feedstuff and the technique of processing. There are less research works on the bioactivity of it. So Alfalfa is now manly used as animal feedstuff and a little of alfalfa protein used as a supplementary dietary protein. Therefore, the value of its products is lower than they should be. The abundant alfalfa resources may contain many kinds of bioactivity. The aim of research work here is to study the bioactivity of alfalfa and the influence factors to Its flavonoids and saponins.1. Studies on the bioactivity of alfalfa extract5 experiments were conducted with broilers to study the bioactivity of alfalfa extract. The functions of alfalfa extract being determined include the effects of growth promoter on weight gain, feed efficiency, carcass quality, flora of Escherichia coli and immune response of broiler. The results shown that there are significant effect of alfalfa extract on many physical and biochemical index of broiler. Administration of 600mg/kg, 900mg/kg of MX significantly (p<0.05) enhanced the growth of 21-42 days broilers. The breast percentage of three groups added MX increased 9.7%~26.4% and abdominal adipose percentage decreased 14.7~28.7%. Significant decrease (p<0.05) in colony-forming units of intestinal Escherichia coli of boiler were noted in three MX groups although no inhibiting effect in vitro. Addition of 300mg/kg, 600mg/kg MX increased the weight of thymus, spleen and promoted T and B lymphocyte proliferation, but when the level of MX increase the proliferation of T and B lymphocyte tends to decrease. Results of this study indicated that supplement 300mg/kg, 600mg/kg MX are benefit for boilers on increase weight, survival rate. The mechanisms of the enhancement may be due to the inhibiting intestinal Escherichia coli and promoting immune function. 2. Studies on the influence factors to flavonoids and saponins and chemical composition of alfalfa The method to determine flavonoids and saponins was set up and it's accurateness, repeatability, steadiness and rate of recovery were determined (RSD<0.05 %). Based on the method according to...