Abstract:
Objective Effects of rutin supplementation in forage on the rumen microbial community diversity and composition of Hu sheep were studied.
Method Thirty-six healthy 3-month-old Hu sheep of similar body weight were randomly divided into 3 groups of 12 animals (half male and female) each for the treatments. The sheep in the control group (CON) were fed a basal diet, while those in two treatment groups on a daily diet supplemented with rutin at a rate of 50 mg (R50) or 100 mg (R100) per kg of animal body weight. The feeding test lasted for 70 d that included 14 d of pre-test and 56 d of actual test.
Result (1) Of the 446 OTUs collected in the sheep rumens, 396 (constituted 88.79% of total) were commonly shared by the sheep in the 3 groups that annotated into 14 phyla, 18 classes, 21 orders, 34 families, and 99 genera. (2) The ACE, Shannon, and Chao1 indices of the sheep in the R100 group were significantly lower than those of CON (P<0.05), while the alpha diversity not significantly different between CON and R50 groups (P>0.05). (3) The results of the principal co-ordinates analysis (PCoA), the non-metric multi-dimensional scaling analysis (NMDS), the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean clustering analysis (UPGMA), and the anosim analysis showed that the microbial community was significantly altered by the R100 treatment (P<0.05). (4) Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes were two dominant phyla. R100 significantly increased the relative abundance of Patescibacteria but decreased that of Elusimicrobia (P<0.05). On the other hand, R50 significantly raised the relative abundance of Elusimicrobia over CON or R100 (P<0.05). (5) At genus level, the dominant microbes were Prevotella_1. The relative abundance of Selenomonas_1 and Succiniclasticum in the sheep fed with R100 were significantly lower than CON (P<0.05) but not significantly different from R50 (P>0.05).
Conclusion Addition of rutin to forage at a rate of 100 mg·kg−1 of sheep body weight significantly affected the rumen microbial diversity in Hu sheep .