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Effect of including sweet potato ( Ipomoea batatas Lam) meal in finishing pig diets on growth performance, carcass traits and pork quality
Author(s) -
Pietrosemoli Silvana,
MoronFuenmayor Oneida Elizabeth,
Paez Angel,
Villamide Maria Jesús
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
animal science journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.606
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1740-0929
pISSN - 1344-3941
DOI - 10.1111/asj.12546
Subject(s) - loin , crossbreed , randomized block design , meal , tenderness , ipomoea , zoology , soybean meal , feed conversion ratio , carcass weight , biology , food science , body weight , agronomy , botany , raw material , ecology , endocrinology
The partial replacement of a commercial concentrate at 10‐20% and 15‐30% (the first percentage of each dietary treatment corresponded to weeks 1–3 and the second to weeks 4–7 of the experiment, respectively) by sweet potato meal (SPM; 70% foliage: 30% roots) was evaluated for growth performance, carcass yield, instrumental and sensory pork quality using 36 commercial crossbred pigs (56.8 ± 1.3 kg initial body weight). Three dietary treatments were compared in a randomized complete block design. Most growth, carcass traits and pork quality variables were not affected by the SPM inclusion. Growth performance averaged 868 g/day and feed efficiency 0.24 kg/kg. However, feed intake increased 2.2% ( P = 0.04) in pigs fed the 10‐20% SPM diets, in a similar order of magnitude as the decrease in dietary energy. Despite an increase in gastrointestinal tract as a percent of hot carcass weight (+14.7%) ( P = 0.03) with SPM inclusion, carcass yield averaged 69.4%. Conversely, decreases in loin yield (−4.2%) ( P = 0.05), backfat thickness (−6.0%) ( P < 0.01) and pork tenderness (−13%) ( P = 0.02) were observed with 15‐30% SPM inclusion. Results suggest that up to 20% SPM inclusion is a viable feed strategy for finishing pigs, easily replicable in small farm settings. © 2016 Japanese Society of Animal Science