LEGUMEPLUS

Optimising plant polyphenols in LEGUMES for ruminant nutrition PLUS health PLUS environmental sustainability

 Partecipanti

Mappa

 Word cloud

Esplora la "nuvola delle parole (Word Cloud) per avere un'idea di massima del progetto.

 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Europe must face the Grand Challenges of climate change and global warming, which will seriously affect the production of foods, including animal feeds. Tightening supplies of energy, foods and feeds will further impact on food security. Feeding animals in Europe with large quantities of imported soyabeans is not sustainable. ‘Home-grown’ protein sources, such as forage legumes, offer a valuable alternative, but ruminant animals make inefficient use of protein from most forage legumes. LegumePlus proposes to investigate alternative forage legumes, which increase feed use efficiency through their bioactive polyphenols. In addition to tackling such sustainability issues, they will also contribute to livestock health, welfare and reduce environmental emissions. LegumePlus will study the efficacy of bioactive legumes to i) optimise ruminant nutrition, ii) reduce greenhouse gas emissions and iii) improve milk, cheese and meat quality. It will also investigate how bioactive legumes can control parasitic worms in animals. This network will enable integrated multidisciplinary and intersectoral research training. New tools for comparative genomics in plant breeding will be harnessed and exploited to benefit ruminants and the environment. A new generation of agricultural biotechnologists will be trained to work across disciplines and solve sustainability and bioresource issues. Young researchers will acquire a thorough understanding of ruminant nutrition and parasitology, analytical chemistry and plant breeding and excellent training in state-of-the-art and industrially relevant scientific skills. Close collaboration between participants from the public and private sectors will ensure that the training programme will enhance the employability of young researchers and meet employers’ requirements for interdisciplinary and transferrable skills. This will contribute to the EU policy aim of transforming Europe into an eco-efficient, knowledge based bio-economy.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

An EU-funded project is looking into alternative legume crops for cattle, sheep and goats that will improve animal health and reduce greenhouse emissions.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Global climate change and population growth pose a major threat to European food security. One way to address this is to make the feed production and utilisation by ruminant animals a more efficient process.

Legumes hold promise in this regard as they are high in protein and require little nitrogen fertiliser. The http://legumeplus.eu (LEGUMEPLUS) project is investigating the potential of legume crops such as red clover, sainfoin and birds foot trefoil as alternatives to imported soya bean feeds for better protein use efficiency and ruminant health.

The first phase of LEGUMEPLUS focused on establishing field trials for these three legumes. The crops produced during these trials are being used throughout this project for plant breeding, agronomic, nutritional and anti-parasitic studies. An important aim is to provide plant breeders with guidelines and tools for selecting new legume varieties with better nutritional and anti-parasitic properties.

Researchers tested the effects of drying and ensiling on the nutritive value of these crops. They all produced good-quality silages.

LEGUMEPLUS also investigated the tannins produced by two of these plants, and developed methods for purifying these tannins for nutritional and anti-parasitic studies in the laboratory. Tannins are antioxidant compounds that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ruminant livestock farms (i.e. nitrous oxide, and perhaps also methane). They can also control gastro-intestinal parasites, which cause large economic losses across the world, because many parasitic worms have become resistant to synthetic veterinary drugs.

Therefore, trials also tested whether feeding legume forages to ruminants affected the growth of four common intestinal parasites. Tannins had significant effects on the parasitic larvae in the laboratory environment and we are keenly awaiting the results from the feeding trials.

In the next phase of the LEGUMEPLUS project, scientists will look at how the tannins in these forages influence the quality of meat, cheese and milk and reduce total worm numbers in animals. When complete, project partners hope to provide European animal farmers with advice on improved feeding strategies for ruminants.