article · Frontiers in Nutrition
Feeding Black Tibetan sheep a high-energy diet improves meat quality, carcass attributes, and flavour. By examining rumen bacteria and muscle tissue metabolites, research reveals that high dietary energy promotes fat deposition in the longissimus lumborum muscle while enhancing its texture and water-holding capacity compared to medium- and low-energy diets. These improvements occur because the energy-dense feed shifts the composition of the rumen microbiota, increasing the abundance of specific bacteria such as Quinella, Ruminococcus 2, and Succinivibrionaceae UCG-001. These microorganisms alter carbohydrate and lipid metabolism, which in turn elevates volatile flavour compounds and specific carbohydrate metabolites in the muscle tissue. Consequently, adjusting dietary energy levels provides a direct biological mechanism to enhance the sensory properties, mouthfeel, and overall quality of mutton derived from Black Tibetan sheep.
Dietary choices for livestock directly alter the microbes in their digestive tracts, which influences meat texture and taste. Understanding how specific feed energy levels change bacterial populations and muscle chemistry helps producers enhance meat flavour and juiciness. This offers a clear nutritional approach to meeting consumer preferences for high-quality mutton.
This research demonstrates an applied nutritional strategy that sheep producers and animal feed manufacturers can adopt to optimise mutton flavour and texture. While the biological links between diet, rumen bacteria, and meat characteristics are tested in Black Tibetan sheep, commercial use in wider livestock operations requires practical feed formulation trials and cost-benefit evaluations under farm conditions.
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This study aims to determine the impact of dietary energy levels on rumen microbial composition and its relationship to the quality of Black Tibetan sheep meat by applying metabolomics and Pearson's correlation analyses. For this purpose, UHPLC-QTOF-MS was used to identify the metabolome, whereas 16S rDNA sequencing was used to detect the rumen microbiota. Eventually, we observed that the high energy diet group (HS) improved the carcass quality of Black Tibetan sheep and fat deposition in the <i>longissimus lumborum</i> (LL) compared to the medium energy diet group (MS). However, HS considerably increased the texture, water holding capacity (WHC), and volatile flavor of the LL when compared to that of MS and the low energy diet group (LS). Metabolomics and correlation analyses revealed that dietary energy levels mainly affected the metabolism of carbohydrates and lipids of the LL, which consequently influenced the content of volatile flavor compounds (VOCs) and fats. Furthermore, HS increased the abundance of <i>Quinella, Ruminococcus 2, (Eubacterium) coprostanoligenes</i>, and <i>Succinivibrionaceae UCG-001</i>, all of which participate in the carbohydrate metabolism in rumen and thus influence the metabolite levels (stachyose, isomaltose, etc.) in the LL. Overall, a high-energy diet is desirable for the production of Black Tibetan sheep mutton because it improves the mouthfeel and flavor of meat by altering the composition of rumen microbiota, which influences the metabolism in the LL.
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DOI: 10.3389/fnut.2022.915558
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