Effects of dietary oat supplementation on carcass traits, muscle metabolites, amino acid profiles, and its association with meat quality of Small-tail Han sheep.

Oat supplementation of the ruminant diet can improve growth performance and meat quality traits, but the role of muscle metabolites has not been evaluated. This study aimed to establish whether oat grass supplementation (OS) of Small-tail Han sheep improved growth performance and muscle tissue metabolites that are associated with better meat quality and flavor. After 90-day, OS fed sheep had higher live-weight and carcass-weight, and lower carcass fat. Muscle metabolomics analysis showed that OS fed sheep had higher levels of taurine, l-carnitine, inosine-5'-monophospgate, cholic acid, and taurocholic acid, which are primarily involved in taurine and hypotaurine metabolism, purine metabolism, and bile acid biosynthesis and secretion, decreased fat accumulation and they promote functional or flavor metabolites. OS also increased muscle levels of amino acids that are attributed to better quality and flavorsome mutton. These findings provided further evidence for supplementing sheep with oat grass to improve growth performance and meat quality.

[Effects of nitrogen addition on red soil microbes in the Cinnamomum camphora plantation].

In order to investigate the effects of nitrogen addition on the red soil microbial communities in Cinnamomum camphora plantation, three treatments of nitrogen addition were designated as control (N0: 0 g x m(-2)), low nitrogen (N1: 5 g x m(-2)) and high nitrogen (N2 :15 g x m(-2)). Soil microbial numbers, microbial biomass carbon (C), biomass N and microbial community functional diversity were analyzed using the methods of plate counting, chloroform fumigation and BIOLOG system, respectively. The results showed that the numbers of bacteria in N1 and N2 were significantly higher than the control 1 month after nitrogen addition, but significantly lower than the control 13 months after nitrogen addition, and the number of fungi and actinomycetes were not significantly changed after nitrogen addition. The soil microbial biomass C, N increased with the increase of nitrogen at 1 month, but the soil microbial biomass C increased significantly 13 months after nitrogen addition when compared with 1 month after nitrogen addition. The soil microbial biomass N was lower 13 months after nitrogen addition when compared with 1 month after nitrogen addition, but the difference was not significant (P > 0.05). The variation of the carbon utilization efficiency of soil microbial communities was resulted from the nitrogen addition. The indices of Shannon index, Simpson index and McIntosh index were calculated to show the differences in nitrogen treatments and in times, which turned out to be insignificant.