Fibre heroes

There’s a tightrope-walking element to sponsoring research programmes. But as AB Vista Research Director Dr Mike Bedford will happily tell you, when it results in groundbreaking discoveries, the benefits definitely outweigh the risks.

Take the team’s recent collaboration with Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, for example. The project, which set out to understand how chicken’s microbiota digest fibre,  has revealed an important digestive secret that could make a huge difference to the way we formulate feed for optimum results.

Why research?

As animal nutrition develops, it’s vital that we stay at the cutting edge, pushing the boundaries to stay ahead of our competitors commercially – and also to improve scientific knowledge and work towards more sustainable practices.

“We patent where we can and we have an aggressive publication schedule. Last year, we published more than 25 papers – that’s probably as many as some of the major animal nutrition research universities in the UK.

“The work we do at AB Vista takes a helicopter view. The experts at the universities are doing the research into immunology, gut physiology, microbiology – all the ‘ologies’. But it takes us, as the jack of all trades, to drag everything together with that bigger view.”

And the advantages of collaborating with universities don’t end there.

“Over time, AB Agri has sponsored research by a lot of excellent people, and that brings soft benefits, as well as the findings themselves,” Mike adds. “Those people go on to work in interesting and relevant roles and when we ask if we can visit them to discuss what they’re doing, they’re more likely to say yes.

“Not only that but we’ve hired a lot of people from those PhDs. It’s not just about their expertise; it’s about how they fit in. We have four managers in my team, and three of them did AB Agri-sponsored PhDs. We’ve got to know them and they’ve got to know us, and that saves a huge amount in mistaken hires.”

Mike’s easy-going enthusiasm demonstrates exactly why he’s so successful at walking the tightrope between groundbreaking research collaborations with universities and the massive commercial opportunities they bring for the business.

Let’s take a closer look at the chicken digestion discovery.

Fibre heroes

Anyone with even a surface understanding of nutrition knows that fibre is important for health. It benefits the structure of the gut and, in humans, it can even prevent some cancers.

But not all fibres are the same. A few are the heroes, doing all that important work, while others simply go in one end and come out the other. Through deep research into chicken microbiota, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, sponsored by AB Vista, has hit upon a breakthrough.

Understanding the breakthrough depends on understanding how the colon and caeca work. Mike shares the layman’s explanation.

“From the small intestine, fibre goes into the colon,” he explains. “Think of the colon like a ballon, with two cul de sacs on the side, which are the carca, the fermentation powerhouse of the chicken. Once the fibre is in the colon, the valve to the small intestine and to the rectum closes, and the colon then contracts. This squeezes the contents and under pressure they are forced into the caeca, through the caecal values. The caeca now fills up.

“We used to think both soluble and insoluble fibre entered the caeca and, correspondingly, that both insoluble and soluble fibre contributed to gut health.

“But after finding that very little particulate matter enters the caeca through the caecal ‘sieves’, and that which does is mostly less than 50 microns across, this work turns that assumption on its head.”

So what’s the practical application of this insight?

“We now know that for the chicken, fermentable fibre is soluble fibre, so a better strategy would be to try to turn as much insoluble fibre into soluble so the bird can use it,” continues Mike.

“It has implications for new product developments such as enzymes. The race is on to discover candidates that can create soluble fibre from ingredients which up to now have not responded well to current feed enzymes; ingredients such as maize and sorghum.
 
“It tells us there are a huge amount of fibres that we should disregard. To provide better nutrition for chickens, we need to increase the amount of soluble fibre and disregard the rest.

“Since maize is by far the most commonly used cereal in animal feeds in the world, the opportunities are huge.”

Unpicking complexity

It’s fascinating to hear that Mike and the team’s cutting edge scientific collaborations are revealing genuinely new information about digestion that could have far-reaching implications. And there’s more to come.

“The gut is so interconnected that we’re probably never going to understand everything,” he says, “and that means our discoveries are complex in themselves. But the potential impact is enormous.”