The Viscosity Interaction of Barley Beta-Glucan with Trichoderma viride Cellulase in the Chick Intestine

Abstract

A culture filtrate from Trichoderma viride was used as a source of cellulose degrading enzymes. This filtrate, when added to a barley ration fed to chicks, improved growth and feed efficiency by 19% and 8%, respectively. The response was saturable since increasing amounts of filtrate above 50 mg/kg produced no further improvement. Barley eta-glucan was added to a corn-based diet (10 g/kg) to evaluate the effect of the culture filtrate on the viscosity of beta-glucan in the chick intestinal contents. Barley beta-glucan increased the viscosity of the supernatant of the chick intestinal contents threefold and the culture filtrate reduced the viscosity to near control levels when combined with the diet containing beta-glucan. The presence of beta-glucan in barley probably limits growth of chicks by increasing viscosity of intestinal contents.

The nutritional value of raw, autoclaved and dehulled peas (Pisum sativum L.) in chicken diets as affected by enzyme supplementation

“…Enzymes have been extensively used in the past decade as additives to poultry diets (Campbell and Bedford 199b. Numerous studies have demonstrated the benefits of crude enzyme preparations when added to barley-containing diets (Suga et al 1978;Hesselman et al 1981;White et al 1981;Classen et al 1985: Rotter et ai. 1990).…”

Effects of non-starch polysaccharides enzymes on pancreatic and small intestinal digestive enzyme activities in piglet fed diets containing high amounts of barley

“…But anti-nutritive factors in barley limit its use in feed industry [1] . The predominant anti-nutritive factor is non-starch polysaccharides (NSP), including β-glucan ((1-3), (1-4)-β-D-glucan) [2,3] and arabinoxylan [4] . The β-glucan and pentosan content in whole barley grain was 4.2% and 6.6%, being 1.8% and 1.4% in endosperm [5] .…”

The production of recombinant proteins in transgenic barley grains

“…The high amount of (1, 3-1, 4)-␤-glucans present in the endosperm walls is the reason why barley is considered a low-metabolic energy feed grain and therefore is an unacceptable component in chicken feed for poultry. The birds do not produce an enzyme in their gastrointestinal tract to depolymerize the (1, 3-1, 4)-␤-glucans, and this leads to a high viscosity of the feed in the intestine, a limited uptake of nutrients, and sticky droppings adhering to the chickens and the floors of the production cages (36,37). Inclusion of fungal enzyme preparations or purified (1, 3-1, 4)-␤-glucanase from Bacillus amyloliquefaciens to barley diets can overcome the nutritional deficiencies of barley grain and prevent the occurrence of sticky droppings (38,39).…”