Effects of high-concentrate diet supplemented with grape seed proanthocyanidins on growth performance, liver function, meat quality, and antioxidant activity in finishing lambs

Abstract

Grape seed proanthocyanidins (GSPs) as natural antioxidants in livestock production has become important scientific research issue due to their antioxidant functions and positive effects on performance. This study was conducted to investigate the effects of dietary supplementation with GSPs on liver function, growth performance, meat quality, and antioxidative activity in the longissimus dorsi (LD) muscle in lambs fed a high-concentrate diet. A total of forty-eight 1/2 Dorper × 1/2 thin-tailed Han ram lambs (body weight (BW) = 28.9 ± 1.67 kg, age = 145 ± 9 day; mean ± SD) were fed a 70:30 concentrate: forage basal diet and randomly divided into four groups: the basal diet supplemented with 0 (control), 10 (10GSPs), 20 (20GSPs), or 40 mg/kg BW/day (40GSPs) GSPs. The results showed that final BW, dry matter intake (DMI), and average daily gain (ADG) responded quadratically (P ≤ 0.039) with the relative higher values for the 10GSPs and 20GSPs groups. The pH, cooking loss, and intramuscular fat in the LD muscle were not affected by dietary supplementation with GSPs (P > 0.05). Dietary supplementation with GSPs linearly decreased the Warner-Bratzler shear force (P = 0.007) of the LD muscle. As supplementation with GSPs increased, the total antioxidative capacity, catalase, glutathione peroxidase 4 and superoxide dismutase activity in the LD muscle increased linearly (P ≤ 0.011). In addition, the concentrations of total protein and albumin in the peripheral blood increased linearly (P ≤ 0.003) and the activities of aspartate aminotransferase and alanine transaminase declined linearly (P ≤ 0.001) with increasing GSPs levels. Therefore, GSPs is beneficial to the growth performance, liver function, and LD muscle antioxidant capacity of lambs, indicating that GSPs could be used as a natural feed additive in lamb production to attenuate the oxidative stress induced by a high-concentrate diet.