Effects of two concentrations of dietary tribasic zinc sulfate on growth performance, gut morphology, and zinc transporter expression levels in pigs

Abstract

Tribasic zinc sulfate (TBZ) is insoluble in water and chemically less active than zinc sulfate, making it more suitable to be used in pig diet. To investigate the effects of TBZ on the growth performance, gut morphology, and zinc transporter expression levels, we performed a single-factor experiment and 168 pigs were allocated to three groups with seven pens per treatment. Pigs were either fed a basal diet without zinc supplementation (control group), or a basal diet supplemented with TBZ at 100 mg/kg diet (LTBZ group) or 1000 mg/kg diet (HTBZ group). We found that daily weight gain and feed intake were higher in the LTBZ group than in the HTBZ and control groups. The pigs in the LTBZ group had a higher villus height and villus height/crypt depth ratio when compared with other pigs. Moreover, the pigs in the LTBZ group exhibited higher mRNA expression levels of solute carrier family 39 and lower expression levels of solute carrier family 30 than those fed the HTBZ-supplemented diet. Together, these results indicate that TBZ may potentially be used as a dietary zinc source for young growing pigs and that dietary supplementation with LTBZ benefits growth performance and gut morphology.

Keywords:

• Tribasic zinc sulfate
• growth performance
• zinc transporters
• growing pigs
• immunity

Disclosure statement

We declare that we have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that can inappropriately influence our work, there are no professional or other personal interest of any nature or kind in any product, service and/or company that could be construed as influencing the content of this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by “Huxiang Young Talents Plan” Project of Hunan Province, No. 2019RS2046, Youth Innovation Promotion Association, CAS and China Agriculture Research System of MOF and MARA.