This manuscript reports on the main problems decreasing productivity of dairy cows (e.g. fatty liver syndrome and poor fertility) and how antioxidants could enhance it. High producing dairy cows are prone to oxidative stress, and the situation can be exacerbated under certain environmental, physiological, and dietary conditions. Antioxidants have important effects on the expression of genes involved in the antioxidant status, which may enhance animal health and reproduction. Moreover, antioxidants may contribute to decrease the incidence of spontaneous oxidized flavour […]

Nucleic acid-based techniques which can be used to characterise complex microbial communities without incubation are now being employed regularly in ruminant nutrition studies. Conventional culture-based methods for enumerating rumen microorganisms (bacteria, archaea, protozoa, and fungi) have been superseded and are now used mainly to obtain pure isolates of novel organisms and reference strains that are required for the development and validation of the nucleic acid approaches. These reference strains are also essential for physiological studies of the lifestyle of the […]

Due to limitations of new land areas for agriculture, its development has being based on increase in productive indexes in animal and plant production. However, negative effects have being emerged, as excessive utilization of non renewable natural resources and environmental pollution. The objective of this work was to demonstrate the possibility of use of models of saturation kinetics in agriculture (plant and animal production) to improve efficiency of use of non renewable natural resources, avoid complete depletion of them and […]

The Brazilian semi-arid region has 928 km2 ranging from the northern portion of Minas Gerais and Espirito Santo States, the semi-arid lands of Bahia, Sergipe, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, Ceará, and Piauí States, and 45 counties from southeastern Maranhão State. Population is mainly concentrated in rural areas and the major occupation is agriculture and livestock production. Dairy production is one of the few options in these areas, mainly in northeast Brazil, where the feeding systems are based […]

Goat milk is considered one of the most complete foods, since it holds several elements which are important for human nutrition, and necessary for the constitution of tissues and blood. This revision aims to assess the variations of the chemical composition and physical-chemical properties of the milk which occur due to some factors, such as: climate, breed, the individual, lactation stage and food. Feed management has been considered a key factor in the manipulation of milk components. There is a […]

The methodology of in vitro embryo production in ovine requires the development of maturation, fertilization and culture media, in order to increase cleavage and development rates. This, in turn, would improve the implement of biotechnological programs for commercial purposes, as well as the use of this technique for cloning and transgenesis in this species. From the point of view of research, the oocytes can be obtained by puncture or slicing of ovaries collected from abattoirs, or by laparospic follicular aspiration […]

Considering that the world-wide trend is to produce what is consumed and that the science of the meat looks for the highest degree of satisfaction of the consumer, the study approaches the characteristics that propitiate this satisfaction in the sheep meat.The use of the human senses in the perception of the characteristics that provoke the highest consumer acceptability determines the definition of “quality”; this indicates important sensorial characteristics of lamb: the succulence (water holding capacity), colour, texture (tenderness), odour and […]

The animal meal prohibition as a protein source with low ruminal degradability in ruminant nutrition, creates the need to seek alternatives, as legume seeds, however, its protein, have a high degradability, which could generate losses of nitrogen in the rumen. Other problem in the legume seeds is the content of antinutritional factors such as protease inhibitors, tannins, phenolic compounds, lectins and some others, could affect the digestibility. One alternative to decrease the degradability of the protein and/or decrease the activity […]

Horses evolved consuming primarily fermentable forage carbohydrates, but forage diets have been traditionally supplemented with grain meals rich in starch and sugar in order to provide additional calories, protein and micronutrients. Starch and sugar are important for performance horses, but the consumption starch-rich meals may cause equine digestive and metabolic disorders. The critical capacity for preileal starch digestibility appears to be 0.35 to 0.4% but may be as little, depending on the source of starch. Small intestinal absorption of simple […]

Major gaps in knowledge on fish larval nutritional requirements still remain, what leads to high mortalities and quality problems in marine larviculture. This paper reviews a range of new tools, such as tracer studies, population genomics, nutritional programming, functional genomics and proteomics, as well as some examples of their present use, and potential future applications in the study of fish larvae nutrition.