review · Poultry Science
Market pressures and regulatory directives encourage the development of alternatives to traditional antibiotics in poultry farming. Antibiotics have routinely been used to promote growth and prevent disease, but plant-derived essential oils provide natural antimicrobial substitutes. Essential oils contain complex volatile compounds, primarily terpenes and phenylpropenes, which exhibit antibacterial, antifungal, antiparasitic, and antiviral activities suitable for therapeutic use in broiler production. However, their chemical makeup varies widely depending on soil quality, plant maturity, harvesting time, drying methods, and extraction techniques. A significant hurdle to using essential oils directly is their high volatility. Formulating these oils into nanoemulsions provides a stable carrier system that addresses volatility, substantially improving the bioavailability of their active lipophilic components. Consequently, essential oils and nanoemulsions offer viable green options for feed supplementation in organic poultry production systems.
Regulatory requirements and consumer demands are driving poultry producers to reduce antibiotic use while maintaining flock health and growth performance. Natural plant-derived additives, enhanced by nanotechnology carriers, offer a sustainable method to protect broilers against infections without relying on conventional antimicrobials, supporting cleaner organic farming practices and lowering risks associated with antibiotic resistance.
This approach targets poultry feed manufacturers and organic broiler producers seeking non-antibiotic feed additives. Nanoemulsion delivery systems address the volatility limitations of essential oils, making commercial feed formulation more feasible. Based on the review of existing experimental studies, the concept remains an applied research topic moving toward testing in production environments, requiring standardised oil sourcing and scalable nanoemulsion manufacturing before widespread market adoption.
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Increasing market pressure to reduce the use of antibiotics and the Veterinary Feed Directive of 2019 have led to expanded research on alternate antibiotic solutions. This review aimed to assess the benefits of using essential oils (EOs) and their nanoemulsions (NEs) as feed supplements for poultry and their potential use as antibiotic alternatives in organic poultry production. Antibiotics are commonly used to enhance the growth and prevent diseases in poultry animals due to their antimicrobial activities. EOs are a complex mixture of volatile compounds derived from plants and manufactured via various fermentation, extraction, and steam distillation methods. EOs are categorized into 2 groups of compounds: terpenes and phenylpropenes. Differences among various EOs depend on the source plant type, physical and chemical soil conditions, harvest time, plant maturity, drying technology used, storage conditions, and extraction time. EOs can be used for therapeutic purposes in various situations in broiler production as they possess antibacterial, antifungal, antiparasitic, and antiviral activities. Several studies have been conducted using various combinations of EOs or crude extracts of their bioactive compounds to investigate their complexity and applications in organic poultry production. NEs are carrier systems that can be used to overcome the volatile nature of EOs, which is a major factor limiting their application. NEs are being progressively used to improve the bioavailability of the volatile lipophilic components of EOs. This review discusses the use of these nonantibiotic alternatives as antibiotics for poultry feed in organic poultry production.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.psj.2021.101584
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