A Review on Enhancing Gut Health in Poultry: Probiotic Stability, Stress Management, and Encapsulation Strategies

The gut serves in the digestion of foods, the absorption of nutrients, and the maintenance of the host's health. Intestinal flora maintains a healthy gut by interacting with intestinal cells and inhibiting pathogens from adhering to the gut wall. Probiotics are widely used to regulate intestinal microflora, prevent and treat intestinal disorders,, and promote growth by replacing antibiotics in poultry. The current paper focuses on the effects of probiotics on gut health in general and stress factors that affect probiotic survivability from handling to the host animal's distal intestinal tract. We also go through the various ways of dealing with these stressful factors and methods adopted for industrial use. The use of encapsulation to preserve probiotics has been proven to be effective. The encapsulation strategy directly benefits stability by providing a physical barrier to safeguard them from unfavorable environments. Probiotics have been encapsulated using a variety of approaches. Here, we also discuss the effects of encapsulation on probiotic stability during different stages from processing to animal gut. Choosing the appropriate encapsulating process and encapsulating material during is crucial for producing the best microcapsule as an additive for animal feed, which ultimately improves the animal's intestinal health.