Innovative in vitro approaches to study dietary factors able to enhance efficiency and to reduce excretions of the rumen fermentations

Supervisor : Mauro Spanghero

The rumen is a complex microbiological system and account for more than 70% of the total digestive tract volume in ruminants. Understanding the metabolism in the rumen will allow to improve the nutritional efficiency of ruminant animals and to reduce their digestive excretions (e.g. methane, urinary nitrogen). The nutritional studies on rumen function and environment conducted on in vivo animals are expensive in time and costs and require manipulation (even surgical) of the animals. 
The aim of this project is to design and set up an apparatus able to simulate the rumen activity in a long term continuous in vitro fermentation (in the laboratory). The rumen inoculum needed to activate the in vitro fermentations will be collected from animals immediately after slaughtering and therefore the system will be completely independent from the utilization of experimental animals. The system will allow to study the effect of different diets, dietary ingredients and/or additives to either enhance beneficial processes like fiber digestion, lactate fermentation and non-protein nitrogen use or minimize inefficient processes like methane production and ammonia absorption. In order to innovate the investigations of the rumen microbial environment, new experimental measures based on molecular techniques (of quantitative real time PCR) will integrate measures usually utilized in vitro rumen fermentation studies.

Biography and contacts
Federico Mason was born in 1984 in Udine-Italy. In 2007 graduated in Animal Production Science (106/110) and 2010 graduated in Animal Science Master (106/110) at Udine University (Italy). In 2012 he started the doctoral course at the PhD school “Agriculture Science and Biotechnology” at the University of Udine.

federico.mason@uniud.it
[Phone 0432558589]