59. Leveraging Functional Ingredients to Improve Gut Health and Resilience in Monogastric Systems.

Abstract The use of functional feed ingredients has emerged as a promising strategy to improve gut health, immune function, and overall resilience in poultry and swine, particularly in the context of reduced antibiotic use. Functional ingredients exert biological effects on the gastrointestinal tract, metabolic processes, and immune responses, thereby enhancing animal performance and health. This symposium presentation highlights recent research evaluating several functional ingredients, including red osier dogwood extract (ROD), seaweed-derived products, apple pomace, and omega-3 rich oilseeds such as ahiflower and flaxseed. A major focus is placed on ROD, a polyphenol-rich plant extract with high antioxidant capacity. Dietary inclusion of ROD (0.1–0.5%) improved nutrient digestibility, increased intestinal absorptive capacity, and enhanced gut morphology in broiler chickens. ROD supplementation also modulated gut microbiota by increasing beneficial Lactobacillus populations and reducing potentially undesirable genera such as Weissella. Importantly, ROD reduced mortality and maintained growth performance comparable to antibiotic-fed controls, particularly under immune challenge conditions (Salmonella lipopolysaccharide and live infection models). Additional studies demonstrated the benefits of brown seaweed products in improving growth performance, gut morphology, and microbiome composition in broilers. In swine, inclusion of 5% apple pomace enhanced feed efficiency and nutrient digestibility, indicating its value as a sustainable functional ingredient. The presentation also explores dual-function ingredients that not only provide nutrients but also enhance the nutritional value of animal-derived foods. Inclusion of ahiflower seed effectively enriched chicken meat and eggs with omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), including α-linolenic acids, stearidonic acid, eicosapentaenoic, and docosahexaenoic, without compromising production performance. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that certain functional ingredients can serve as viable alternatives to antibiotics while improving gut health, resilience, and product quality in monogastric livestock. Their integration into feeding strategies represents a sustainable approach to supporting animal health and producing value-added animal products.