Phytobiotics in poultry and swine nutrition – a review

Abstract

The trend in the use of phytobiotics in animal feed has been increased during last two decades. Investigations showed that excessive use of in-feed antibiotics will intensify the potential risks of increasing resistance in human pathogens. Bacterial resistance and antibiotic residues in animal products led to raising the concern in using antibiotics as growth promoters and finally resulted in the ban on using in-feed antibiotics in most of the developed countries. As an alternative, phytobiotics were recommended by researchers and nutritionists. Plenty of studies have been done using phytobiotics in poultry and swine nutrition so far. They have mostly shown the antimicrobial, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and growth promoting effects of phytobiotics. Antioxidative function of phytobiotics can positively affect the stability of animal feed and increase animal’s products quality and storage time. Generally, the available documents indicate the positive effects of phytobiotics on poultry and swine performance. Due to the contradictions in published results, further research and investigations are still necessary to elucidate various nutritional aspects of phytobiotics. In the following context, the authors try to provide an overview of the recently published results on application of phytobiotics and possible mode of actions as an alternative for in-feed antibiotics in poultry and swine nutrition.