Effects of dietary supplementation of Curcuma aromatica and inositol monophosphate on performance and IgG of blood in lactating sows and piglets

Several authors have observed that the herb Curcuma aromatica (CA) and inositol monophosphate (IP) perform several biological activities such as anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and intracellular calcium (Ca²⁺) concentration control (Shen et al. 2002; Steger et al. 2002; Sikha et al. 2015). Due to these activities, it was hypothesised that adding these compounds into feed may influence sow and piglet performance. This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of dietary supplementation of CA and IP on the performance and immunoglobulin G (IgG) concentrations in blood from lactating sows and piglets.

Eighteen (Landrace × Yorkshire) third parity sows and their litters were used in a 28 days feeding trial (21 nursing days). Sows with an average initial bodyweights (BW) of 249.9 ± 3.2 kg were allotted into three treatments with six replicate pens per treatment on d 108 of gestation, based a randomised block design. Dietary treatments (formulated to meet NRC 2012) included: (1) basal diet (CON); (2) basal diet + CA 0.5% in feed (CA); and (3) basal diet + IP 0.1% in feed (IP). Sow BW and backfat were recorded before farrowing, within a few hours after farrowing and after weaning. Piglet BW was recorded on d 0, 1, 7, 14, and 21 (weaning) and the number of piglets for each sow was recorded on farrowing day and weaning to evaluate piglet survival rate. Blood, colostrum and milk samples were taken before farrowing and weaning day. All data were analysed using the GLM procedure of SAS (v9, SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA). The individual sow or litter of piglets were used as the experimental unit. Differences among the treatment means were determined by using the Tukey’s test with P < 0.05 indicating significance. The results are shown in Table 1.

Table 1.  Effect of Curcuma aromatica (CA) and inositol monophosphate (IP) supplementation in lactating Parity 3 sows and piglets

Piglet weaning weight and average daily gain (ADG) in the IP treatment group were higher than those in CA treatment (P < 0.05) but both IP and CA supplementation did not improve litter performance over those fed CON. The CA diet numerically improved sow bodyweight loss, back fat loss, blood IgG in sows and piglets compared with CON but was not significant (P > 0.10).

In conclusion, in this study, supplementation of 0.5% CA and 0.1% IP in feed failed to affect growth performance or IgG in sow and piglets compared with CON.