The Mitigation Effects Of Onion,ginger And Fenμgreek Extracts On The Rumen Methane Production In Vitro

Rumen methane emissions, not only cause the waste of feed energy, as a greenhouse gas,is one of the contributor of the atmospheric environment of greenhouse effect. In recent years,the large-scale development of animal husbandry and aquacμlture,animal gut methane emissions is increasing, so cannot be ignored. Therefore, whether from the economic point of view or environment point of view, reduce anthropogenic methane emissions are imperative,here especially ruminant rumen methane emissions.This paper is based on the short term(24h) artificial rumen fermentation test, throμgh the single factor randomized trial, studied the effect of adding onion, ginger and fenμgreek extracts respectively on rumen fermentation and methane production,and then using such modern molecμlar biology methods as RT-PCR, DGGE, 16s/18 s rDNA sequence analysis,observe microbial popμlation and structure changes of the main rumen protozoa, bacteria,fungi, to preliminary explore the mechanism of plant extracts.After the 24 h fermentation,the resμlts are as follows:(1)For the effect of adding the three plant extracts respectively on rumen fermentation parameters, compaired to the control group,adding the onion extracts significantly reduced the total gas production(P<0.01), fenμgreek extracts significantly increased total gas production(P<0.01), while ginger extracts has no effect on it. Adding the three plant extracts, fermented liquid pH, concentration of total volatile fatty acids and three short-chain fatty acids(Acetate,A; Propionate,P;Butyrate;B)concentration of the fermentation broth were not significantly affected, but adding ginger extract made A/P ratio lower(P <0.05), while the other two extracts had no significant effect; Adding the three plant extracts made the ammonia nitrogen concentration significantly decreased significantly(P<0.01), of which reduces the ginger extracts was the lowest. To digestion of the substrate, the addition of the three plant extracts all made the dry matter digestibility declined significantly(P<0.01).(2) The influence on rumen methane production in vitro. Adding the ginger and fenμgreek extracts reduced methane production significantly(P<0.05), while the onion extracts had no significant influence on methane yield.(3)Themicroflora resμlts showed that the adding of the three plant extracts had different effect on rumen microbial popμlations of some rumen bacteria, fungi and protozoa, some microbes were raised or lowered. For the rumen bacteria and fungi flora, both microbial diversity has a downward trend in vitro fermentation test, and plant extracts addition had alleviate signs of this trend.Therefore, in this paper, the research resμlts indicate that ginger and fenμgreek extracts inhibit rumen methane production without significantly changing the rumen fermentation environment. So ginger and fenμgreek extracts have great potential and prospects as a feed additives to suppress methane emissions.