Iron is a vital important mineral that is essential for animals in various physiological functions. During pregnancy, iron deficiency is closely associated with multiple adverse outcomes for both mother and infant, including an increased risk of sepsis, maternal mortality, perinatal mortality, and low birth weight. Nearly all women were to some degree iron deficient, and that more than half of the pregnant women in developing countries suffered from anemia.

In order to improve the iron deficiency problems, researchers in Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISA) designed a new iron chelate ferrous N-carbamylglycinate as an iron fortifier (patent No: 201310142525.4).

They conducted the toxicity evaluation and the results showed it was a low-toxic substance without genotoxicity. Moreover, the study on iron-deficiency rats also found that it could increase the plasma iron and ferritin levels and improved blood iron status.

Most recently, it had been found maternal dietary supplementation of ferrous N-carbamylglycinate chelate to the late-gestation feeds of sows provided critical nutrients which were extremely important for late-gestation sows.

It improved the reproduction performance, as well as iron parameters of neonatal piglets, especially in litter weights, iron saturations and total iron binding capacity.

In their study, a total of 40 large-white sows at three-parity were randomly assigned into two groups and receiving diets containing Fe-CGly (n=20) and ferrous sulfate (FeSO₄) (n=20) from d85 of gestation to giving birth. The litter size, mean weight of born alive, birth (alive) litter weight, numbers of born alive, still-born piglets, mummies and weak-born piglets were recorded for each sow. The d110 serum of sows, placentas, d0 serum of piglets, and muscle, liver and kidney tissues of piglets were submitted for iron analysis.

The results showed that sows that supplemented with Fe-CGly had a better reproductive performance compared to sows that treated with FeSO₄, and increased the birth (alive) litter weight (P<0.05). The iron status of these sows and their offspring were also improved.

Particularly, reseachers found that Fe-CGly significantly increased placenta iron levels (P<0.05) of sows. Meanwhile, it significantly increased iron saturation and reduced the total iron binding capacity (TIBC) of piglets (P<0.05) at birth.

"The present results provide us new insights for the iron fortifiers development during the practices of livestock and poultry industry” said WAN Dan, an assistant researcher follower in ISA, “We're looking forward to its good performance. Next, our group will apply the "National New Product" certificate for this excellent compound”.

This research was granted by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFD0501201, 2016YFD0200900, 2016YFD0500504), the Major Project of Hunan Province (2015NK1002), the Open Foundation of Key Laboratory of Agro-ecological

Processes in Subtropical Region, Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISA2016303), the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (2016JJ3131).

The study entitled “Maternal dietary supplementation with ferrous N-carbamylglycinate chelate affects sow reproductive performance and iron status of neonatal piglets” can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1017/S1751731117003172 

Contact: YIN Yulong