Effects of guanidinoacetic acid on growth performance, meat quality and antioxidation in growing-finishing pigs

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of Guanidinoacetic Acid (GAA) on growth performance, meat quality and antioxidation in growing-finishing pigs. In total, 144 crossbred pigs with an initial weight at approximately 45 kg were randomly assigned to 4 treatments with 6 pens per treatment and 6 pigs per pen. The pigs were given a basal maize-soybean meal diet supplemented with 0, 0.8, 1.2 or 2.0 GAA g kg -1, respectively. The addition of GAA to their diet did not affect the feed to gam ratio (p = 0.253), average daily gain (p = 0.153) and average daily feed intake (p = 0.212) of the pigs. However, increasing the amount of GAA linearly increased the pH (p = 0.009) and quadratically reduced the drip loss (p = 0.018), shear force (p = 0.030) and b* value (p<0.001) of the pigs. A higher dosage of GAA quadratically increased the activity of Glutathione Peroxidase (GPx, p = 0.012), Catalase (CAT, p = 0.005) and Total Antioxidant Capability (TAOC, p = 0.035) and quadratically decreased the concentration of Malondialdehyde (MDA, p<0.001) in pig plasma. Raising the dosage of supplemental GAA even further quadratically increased the activity of Superoxide Dismutase (SOD, p = 0.020), CAT (p = 0.026) and TAOC (p = 0.043) and quadratically decreased MDA (p<0.001) in the pig muscle tissue. This indicates that dietary GAA does not improve growth performance in pigs but increases the pH value and reduces the drip loss and yellow colour of the meat by decreasing lipid peroxidahon and increasing the activities of some enzymes associated with free radical metabolism ingrowing-finishing pigs. © Medwell Journals, 2012.