Effect of Chromium Picolinate Supplementation on Growth Performance and Meat Characteristics of Swine

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of supplemental chromium (Cr) in the form of chromium picolinate (CrPic) on swine growth performance, meat quality, and protein deposition in skeletal muscle. Forty-eight piglets were divided into three groups randomly, fed with three different dietary levels of Cr (common basal feedstuff supplemented with a dose of 1.61 μg/g or 3.22 μg/g CrPic, which corresponded to 0.2 and 0.4 μg/g Cr). Results indicated that during the growing period (1-35 days), pigs fed with the diet supplemented with CrPic showed no improvement in body mass, average daily gain (ADG), feed consumption, or feed conversion rate (FCR) (P > 0.05). During the finishing period, a supplementary dose of 0.2 μg Cr/g improved daily weight gain significantly (P < 0.05), while the situation had no significance with 0.4 μg Cr/g (P > 0.05) supplemented. For the entire growing-finishing period, body mass increased by 3.86%, ADG rose by 6.08%, and the FCR decreased by 3.30%; levels of total muscular pigment and that in the ribeye areas significantly improved (P < 0.05) when supplementation with 0.2 μg Cr/g (P < 0.05) was employed. However, there were no significant changes when supplemented with 0.4 μg Cr/g. While there were no changes in yield of carcass, back fat, water holding capacity, or levels of muscular crude protein and fat (P > 0.05) in treatment, the ratio of fat-lean and RNA/DNA increased significantly supplemented with 0.2 μg Cr/g (P < 0.05), but there were no significance with 0.4 μg Cr/g supplementation. In addition, the muscular levels of cholesterol had slightly decreased and the content of DNA in skeletal muscle showed no marked changes with 0.2 or 0.4 μg/g Cr supplementation. In conclusion, the present results suggested that dietary Cr supplementation in the dose of 0.2 μg/g could promote the growth performance, carcass characteristics, and protein deposition.

Effects of Dietary Chromium Methionine on Growth Performance, Carcass Composition, Meat Colour and Expression of the Colour-related Gene Myoglobin of Growing-finishing Pigs

“…O’Quinn et al (1998) reported that drip loss percentage in gilts increased with increased CrNic supplementation. Zhang et al (2011) reported that no change occurred in water-holding capacity, which was similar to our results. The SF was impacted by several factors such as pH, IMF and storage time of pork longissimus muscle (Van Laack et al, 2001).…”

“…Evock-Clover et al (1993) reported that young growing pigs given Cr showed no improvement in growth rate, feed efficiency or composition of gain. Finally, Zhang et al (2011) reported that a supplementary dose of 0.2 mg/kg Cr as chromium picolinate significantly improved daily weight gain during the finishing period, which was similar to our results. We demonstrated that dietary Cr supplementation increased ADG but that the feed utilization of growing-finishing pigs decreased with the increasing Cr supplementation.…”

“…There were a series of experiments in which various levels of Cr were fed to pigs, and reported that the subjective colour score was increased by 16.5% by adding 0.2 mg/kg Cr as CrProp (Shelton et al, 2003). Additionally, different levels of total muscular pigment in the ribeye area were significantly improved (p<0.05) in growing-finishing pigs fed CrPic (Zhang et al, 2011). Furthermore, the research of Matthews et al (2005) indicated that CIE L*, a*, b* of the loin muscle were not affected (p<0.62 to 0.99) by CrProp.…”

Effects of Graded Levels of Chromium Methionine on Performance, Carcass Traits, Meat Quality, Fatty Acid Profiles of Fat, Tissue Chromium Concentrations, and Antioxidant Status in Growing-Finishing Pigs

“…The shear force of cooked meat has been proved to decrease with increasing intramuscular fat contents and pH 1 value [42], but neither was affected by CrMet addition in present experiment. Besides, our data revealed that the moisture, crude fat, and protein contents in muscle were not affected by CrMet, which agreed with the results of Zhang et al [43], who used 200, 400 μg/kg chromium as CrPic in growingfinishing pigs. However, Samanta et al [44] found that organic chromium increased moisture levels and decreased crude fat contents in meat of broilers.…”

Effects of Supplemental Chromium Source and Concentration on Growth, Carcass Characteristics, and Serum Lipid Parameters of Broilers Reared Under Normal Conditions

“…However, many studies have shown that dietary Cr supplementation caused a positive effect on growth performance and carcass traits of broilers [3][4][5][6][7][8]. Chromium, as well, could affect lipid metabolism and reduce body fat deposition of broilers [9][10][11]. The benefits of Cr supplementation are mostly observed under stressful conditions, and this may be attributed to the effect of Cr in reducing stress-induced corticosteroid concentrations [12][13][14][15].…”