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Resveratrol (RES) displays strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties in protecting the animals from various stressors and inflammatory injuries, but its interrelationship with the gut microbiota remained largely unclear. This study was carried out to investigate the effects of dietary RES supplementation on growth performance, antioxidant capacity, intestinal immunity and gut microbiota in yellow-feathered broilers challenged by lipopolysaccharide (LPS). A total of 240 yellow-feathered broilers were randomly assigned to four treatment groups in a 2 × 2 factorial design. The broilers were fed with the control diet or control diet supplemented with 400 mg/kg RES, followed by challenge with LPS or the same amount of saline. Dietary RES supplementation significantly alleviated the decreases in the final body weight (BW), average daily gain (ADG), and ADFI induced by LPS ( P < 0.05). LPS challenge significantly increased plasma concentrations of triglyceride, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), and cortisol levels, but decreased triiodothyronine (T3) and insulin levels ( P < 0.05). Dietary supplementation with RES significantly reversed the elevated creatinine concentrations and the decreased concentrations of T3 and insulin caused by LPS ( P < 0.05). Moreover, dietary RES supplementation significantly increased plasma total antioxidant capacity (T-AOC) and catalase (CAT) activities and superoxide dismutase (SOD) and T-AOC activities in jejunal mucosa and reduced malondialdehyde (MDA) concentration in the plasma ( P < 0.05). The reduction in the villus height to crypt depth ratio in duodenum, jejunum and ileum and the shortening of villus height in jejunum and ileum caused by LPS were also alleviated by RES treatment ( P < 0.05). Furthermore, the increased concentrations of intestinal tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and IL-1β caused by LPS were significantly decreased by RES treatment ( P < 0.05). Dietary RES treatment increased the mRNA expression of claudin-1 , claudin-5 , occludin , and zonula occludens-1 ( ZO-1 ), and decreased mRNA expression of IL-1 β, IL-8 , IL-17 , and TNF- α after LPS challenge ( P < 0.05). Dietary RES treatments significantly decreased the dominance of cecal microbiota, and increased the Pieiou-e and Simpson index. Moreover, dietary RES supplementation increased relative abundance of UCG&#95; 009 , Erysipelotrichaceae , Christensenellaceae&#95;R-7&#95;group , Anaerotruncus , RF39 , and Ruminococcus while decreasing the abundance of Alistipes at genus level. Spearman correlation analysis revealed that the microbes at the order and genus levels significantly correlated with indicators of growth performance, antioxidant capacity, and intestinal health. Collectively, dietary supplementation with 400 mg/kg RES could improve growth performance and antioxidant capacity, and modulate intestinal immunity in yellow-feathered broilers challenged by LPS at early stage, which might be closely associated with the regulation of gut microbiota community composition., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 He, Li, Xiong, Nie, Zhang and Zhu.)

The full utilization of garlic straw can partially alleviate shortage of feedstuff and waste of resources. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of garlic straw as an unconventional feed on yellow-feathered broilers. 360 28-day-old yellow-feathered broilers were randomly divided into 4 groups with 6 replicates (cage) per group, 15 per cage. The 4 groups were as follows: control group (basal diet) and experimental group I (basal diet supplemented with 3% garlic straw powder), II (basal diet supplemented with 6% garlic straw powder) and III (basal diet supplemented with 9% garlic straw powder). There was no significant difference in the initial body weight of the broilers among groups ( p > 0.05). The test period was 28 days in total. The experiment results showed that there were no significant difference in the average final weight, ADG, ADFI and F/G among groups ( p > 0.05). On the one hand, for the breast muscle, the drip loss of experimental group I, II and III were reduced by 17.24% ( p <0.05), 20.11% ( p <0.05) and 20.50% ( p <0.05), respectively, compared with the control group; the redness a* of the experimental groups had a trend of improvement (0.05 < p < 0.1). On the other hand, compared with the control group, the redness a* of the experimental group II increased significantly by 23.18% for the leg muscles ( p < 0.05). Furthermore, compared with the control group, GSH-Px of the experimental group III significantly increased by 21.38% ( p < 0.05), and SOD of the experimental group I significantly increased by 21.85% ( p < 0.05). Finally, there were no significant differences in the intestinal villus height, crypt depth, V/C and intestinal wall thickness among four groups ( p >0.05). In conclusion, dietary supplementation of different levels of garlic straw powder can improve meat quality and antioxidant capacity of yellow-feathered broilers without affecting growth performance and intestinal mucosal morphology., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Liao, Liao, Huang, Wang, Zhu, Wang, Lv, Li, Fan, Liu and Lin.)

In the perspective of the global climate change leading to increasing temperature, heat stress (HS) has become a severe issue in broiler production, including the indigenous yellow-feathered broilers. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of HS on jejunal immune response, microbiota structure and their correlation in yellow-feathered broilers. A total of forty female broilers (56-days-old) were randomly and equally divided into normal treatment group (NT group, 21.3 ± 1.2°C, 24 h/day) and HS group (32.5 ± 1.4°C, 8 h/day) with five replicates of each for 4 weeks feeding trial. The results showed that HS exposure increased the contents of TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6 in jejunal mucosa ( p < 0.05). The HS exposure up-regulated the relative fold changes of NF-κB, TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6 ( p < 0.01) while down-regulated the relative fold change of IFN-γ in jejunal mucosa ( p < 0.05) . Meanwhile, HS had no significant impacts on alpha diversity of jejunal microbiota such as Simpson, Chao1 richness estimator (Chao 1), abundance-based coverage estimators (ACE), and Shannon index ( p > 0.10). Broilers exposed to HS reduced the jejunal microbial species number at the class and order level ( p < 0.05). Moreover, HS decreased the relative abundance of Ruminococcus , Bdellovibrio, and Serratia at the genus level in jejunum ( p < 0.05). At the phylum level, four species of bacteria ( Bacteroidetes, Cyanobacteria, Thermi, and TM7 ) were significantly associated with immune-related genes expression ( p < 0.05). At the genus level, ten species of bacteria were significantly correlated with the expression of immune-related genes ( p < 0.05), including Caulobacteraceae, Actinomyces, Ruminococcaceae, Thermus, Bdellovibrio, Clostridiales, Sediminibacterium, Bacteroides, Sphingomonadales and Ruminococcus . In particular, the microbial with significantly different abundances, Ruminococcus and Bdellovibrio , were negatively associated with pro-inflammatory cytokines expression ( p < 0.05). These findings demonstrated that HS exposure promoted the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines in yellow-feathered broilers' jejunum. The detrimental effects of HS on jejunal immune response might be related to dysbiosis, especially the reduced levels of Ruminococcus and Bdellovibrio ., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Liu, Huang, Balasubramanian and Jha.)

The present study aimed to investigate the effects of citrus extract (CE) on intestinal microbiota, microbial metabolite profiles, and the mucosal immune status in broilers. A total of 540 one-day-old yellow-feathered broilers were randomly allotted into three groups and fed a basal diet (control group), or a basal diet containing 10 mg/kg of zinc bacitracin (antibiotic group), or 10 mg/kg of CE (CE group). Each treatment consisted of six replicates, with 30 broilers per replicate. After 63-day feeding, two broilers per replicate were randomly selected and slaughtered, and their ileal and cecal digesta and ileal tissue were collected for microbial composition, microbial metabolites, and gene expression analysis. The results showed that CE significantly increased the abundance of Barnesiella and Blautia than did the antibiotic group (adjusted P < 0.05), whereas it decreased the abundance of Alistipes and Bacteroides (adjusted P < 0.05). Meanwhile, the CE group also increased the numbers of Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus than did the control and antibiotic groups ( P < 0.05), whereas it decreased the number of Escherichia coli ( P < 0.05). For microbial metabolites, dietary supplementation with CE increased the concentrations of lactate, total short-chain fatty acids, acetate, and butyrate in the cecum than did the control and antibiotic groups ( P < 0.05), whereas it decreased the concentrations of amino acid fermentation products (ammonia, amines, p -cresol, and indole) ( P < 0.05). Additionally, supplementation with CE up-regulated ( P < 0.05) the mRNA expression of intestinal barrier genes ( ZO-1 and Claudin ) in the ileum than did both the control and antibiotic groups. However, antibiotic treatment induced gut microbiota dysbiosis, altered the microbial metabolism, and disturbed the innate immune homeostasis. In summary, these results provide evidence that dietary supplementation with CE can improve the intestinal barrier function by changing microbial composition and metabolites, likely toward a host-friendly gut environment. This suggests that CE may possibly act as an efficient antibiotic alternative for yellow-feathered broiler production., (Copyright © 2019 Yu, Li, Chen, Wang, Cui and Ma.)