D-pantothenic acid is an integral part of co-enzyme A and acyl carrier protein in the animal's body and has a series of potential health benefits.

The commercial production of calcium D-pantothenate (CD-PA) has always relied on developed chemical-synthetic routes.

The classical chemical process involves highly toxic raw materials and cyanide-containing wastewater (Zou, et al., 2021; Rocha, et al., 2019). Thus, we developed a novel CD-PA product through the microbial-fermentation method (Zhejiang NHU Company Ltd., China) which is almost equal to natural D-pantothenic acid (Leonardi, et al., 2007).

We utilise a sustainable carbon source and transmute it into the CD-PA product using an eco-friendly technique, which reduces about 95% of chemicals and significantly decreases carbon dioxide emissions.

To verify the effectiveness and safety of the CD-PA product, we investigated the effects of dietary supplementation with microbial-fermented CD-PA on growth performance and blood-based biochemical indicators of yellow broilers.

1,440 one-day-old yellow broilers were randomly assigned to nine treatments, with eight replicates per treatment and 20 birds in each replicate cage. The negative control group was fed a corn-soybean meal basal diet without CD-PA. The positive control group was provided with 20mg/kg chemical-synthetic CD-PA (calculated as D-pantothenic acid) to the basal diet. The experimental treatments added 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 125 or 250 mg/kg of microbial-fermented CD-PA to the basal diet. The experiment was conducted at the feed science institute of Zhejiang University (China) and lasted for 70 days.

Growth performance

The effects of dietary supplementation with different levels of CD-PA on the growth performance of 1-70 day-old broilers are shown in Table 1.

Compared with the negative group, dietary supplementation with microbial-fermented CD-PA increased the ADG (P <0.05) and decreased the F/G (P <0.05) of 1-70 day-old broilers. The optimal addition level of microbial-fermented CD-PA is 15-25mg/kg based on the growth performance results. There was no difference in the growth performance of 1-70 day-old broilers between the positive control group and the test group supplemented with 20mg/kg microbial-fermented CD-PA (P >0.05). Additionally, no adverse effect was observed in the growth performance of 1-70 day-old broilers fed with 125mg/kg or 250mg/kg of microbial-fermented CD-PA.

Blood biochemical indicators

Serum biochemical indicators are important parameters for monitoring health status. The changes in specific substance contents in serum have great implications for the healthy management of animals (Ahmed Farid Omar, et al., 2021). The results of this experiment (Table 2) indicated that the 5- and 10-fold addition levels of microbial-fermented CD-PA in this experiment did not affect the contents of the serum biochemical indicators of broilers at 70 days of age compared with the negative control group and normal addition group (P>0.05).

Conclusion

D-pantothenic acid is an integral part of co-enzyme A and acyl carrier protein in the animal's body and has a series of potential health benefits. In order to ensure animal production performance and avoid the occurrence of deficiency, it is necessary to add CD-PA to the feed.

Under the conditions of this experiment, dietary supplementation with 15-25 mg/kg of microbial-fermented CD-PA to the corn-soybean meal diet could achieve optimal growth performance. 5- or 10-fold addition levels had no adverse effect on the growth performance and serum biochemical indicators of yellow broilers.

Therefore, the recommended level of microbial-fermented CD-PA is 15-25mg/kg for yellow boiler. The safety coefficient is 10 times the recommended dose.

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Article made possible through the contribution of Animal Nutrition Research Department, Zhejiang NHU Company Ltd

Zhejiang NHU: The Effectiveness & Safety Evaluation Of Novel, Eco-Friendly Calcium D-Pantothenate