Quantitative Analysis of the Relationship between Ruminal Redox Potential and pH in Dairy Cattle: Influence of Dietary Characteristics

Abstract

The ruminal redox potential (Eh) can reflect the microbiological activity and dynamics of fermentation in the rumen. It might be an important indicator of rumen fermentation in combination with pH. However, the ruminal Eh has been rarely studied in dairy cows due to the difficulty of its measurement, and the relationship between ruminal Eh and pH is not clear. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between ruminal Eh and pH of dairy cows by meta-analysis of systematic measurements from different experiments. A database was constructed from 22 experiments on cannulated dairy cattle including 57 dietary treatments. The ruminal pH and Eh were measured without air contact between 0 and 8 h post-feeding. The results demonstrated a quadratic correlation between ruminal Eh and pH with a reliable within-animal variation (Eh = -1697 + 540.7 pH -47.7 pH2, nobservation = 70, nanimal = 26, P Eh, but not always to the same extent. Some of them still influenced the relationship between ruminal Eh and pH. While the mechanism of the interaction between ruminal Eh and pH remains to be elucidated, it would be interesting to associate Eh to microbial profile, ruminal VFA concentration and milk production performance in future studies.