Maternal nutrition during pregnancy and lactation is crucial for the growth and development and overall health of offspring. Improving maternal nutrition by adjusting dietary structure or supplementing functional additives can promote the growth and development of offspring, overall health, and meat quality. As a methyl donor, betaine has many physiological functions, such as antioxidant, anti-stress, and regulation of nutritional metabolism, which can improve animal reproductive performance, carcass traits, and meat quality. Therefore, betaine is widely used as a functional feed additive in livestock production. At present, the effects of betaine as functional feed additives mainly focus on foreign pig breeds and hybrid pig breeds; however, there are few studies on local pigs in China. Bama Mini-pig is a high-quality local minipig in China, which has the characteristics of genetic stability, tolerance to roughage feeding, strong disease resistance, and delicious meat, and has a good market prospect. However, its slow growth and development, traditional free-range farming, and the lower extensive farming efficiency seriously hindered the healthy development of the pig industry. Therefore, it is of great significance to develop nutritional intervention technology for Bama mini-pigs to ensure its large-scale breeding.
Recently, Xiangfeng Kong 's research team from the Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences, systematically studied the feeding effects of dietary betaine in sows and piglets diet on Bama mini-pigs and discussed its mechanism of hormone secretion, nutrient metabolism, intestinal microecology, gene expression, and other aspects. This team found that dietary betaine supplementation can improve the composition of colostrum and intestinal microecology of sows, and regulate the body's nutritional metabolism and reproductive hormone secretion, thereby improving the reproductive performance of sows. Dietary betaine can also enhance the body's immune function and antioxidant properties, improve intestinal microecology, and regulate the secretion of hormones and nutrient metabolism, thereby promoting the growth and development of suckling piglets. Moreover, dietary betaine can affect the plasma biochemical parameters and hormone content, improve the chemical composition of pork, and regulate the gene expression of skeletal muscle, thereby improving the growth performance, carcass traits, and meat quality of growing-finishing pigs. These findings provide a theoretical basis and technical support for the rational application of betaine in local pig breeding.
These research results have been published in Animal Nutrition, Frontiers in Nutrition, Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, and Chinese Journal of Animal Nutrition. This research was jointly funded by the National Key R&D Program Projects (2018YFD0500404) and Sunwin Biotech (Shandong Co., Ltd.) Cooperation Project.
More details could be found at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aninu.2020.08.010, https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2021.728477, https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2021.779171, https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.11389
Contact: Xiangfeng Kong
E-mail: nnkxf@isa.ac.cn
Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Figure. Schematic diagram of maternal-offspring integration of nutritional intervention study of betaine as a feed additive in Bama mini-pigs.(Image by Yating Cheng)