Effect Of Chitosan On Rumen Microflora Of Goat

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of chitosan on rumen microbial population. The rumen microflora was measured by SSCP method , and semi-quantitative PCR was used to detect the population of 3 cellulolytic bacteria and 2 amylolytic bacteria in the rumen of goat . The study included 3 Parts:Part 1: This study was conducted to examine the effect of chitosan on microflora in vitro. The substrate in vitro was the same as the goat basal diet. Chitosan was added to it at five levels(0,0.03%,0.06%,0.09%,0.12%). The SSCP results showed that the rumen microflora changed after addition of chitosan, the richness,Shannon-Wiener index and Cs changed among the treatments.And in 0.09% group, the richness and Shannon-Wiener index reach maximum.Part 2: Three goats (weight 23.57±1.55kg, fitted with permanent ruminal fistual) was used to study the effect of chitosan on rumen microflora of goat.The concentrate/roughage ratio of basal diet was 30:70. The experiment was conducted by two stages——control(basal diet) and chitosan stages( basal diet+0.09%chitosan) . The SSCP results showed that the rumen microflora was different among the treatments. Both of the richness and Shannon-W iener index increased gradually after adding chitosan, The Cs index between d7and d14 is highest.Part 3: Five representative cellultyic and amylolytic bacteria were choosed including Raminococcus albus, Ruminococcus flavefaciens, Fibrobacter succinogenes, Prevotella ruminicola and Ruminobacter amylophilus. The semi-quantitative PCR on the sequence of 16S rDNA was developed. And this method was used to quantitive the rumen bacteria both in vivo and in vitro. The result showed as follows: In vitro, when the level of chitosan were 0.06%, 0.09% respectively, the relative amount of Ruminobacter amylophilus and Ruminococcus flavefaciens increased significantly (P<0.05). In vivo , compared to the control, chitosan significantly promoted the growth of Raminococcus albus ,Ruminococcus flavefaciens and Ruminobacter amylophilus on d14 (P<0.05).In summary, under the condition of this experiment, addition of chitosan might consequently influence the rumen microflora and promote the growth of rumen bacterial.