Offered Papers Theme A: Efficient Production from Grassland
Description
Little is known about how plant biochemistry influences the grazing behaviour of animals grazing heterogeneous vegetation communities. Furthermore, most biochemical profiles of grassland species are restricted to major nutritional characteristics. Recent developments in analytical techniques have made possible the detailed analysis of minor components, which can potentially affect animal feeding preferences, performance and health. Gas chromatography/time of flight mass spectroscopy (GC/TOF-MS) coupled with automated library annotation is ideally suited to the acquisition of detailed metabolite profiles of plant extracts (Wagner et al., 2003) and can be applied to other matrices such as blood and faeces. In this study GC/TOF-MS was used to identify metabolites within heathland plants, and to investigate which of these metabolites were present and absent within plasma and faeces from sheep consuming mixtures of these plants.
Included in
Agricultural Science Commons, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Commons, Plant Biology Commons, Plant Pathology Commons, Soil Science Commons, Weed Science Commons
Metabolic Profiling of Heathland Plants in the Diet of Sheep
Little is known about how plant biochemistry influences the grazing behaviour of animals grazing heterogeneous vegetation communities. Furthermore, most biochemical profiles of grassland species are restricted to major nutritional characteristics. Recent developments in analytical techniques have made possible the detailed analysis of minor components, which can potentially affect animal feeding preferences, performance and health. Gas chromatography/time of flight mass spectroscopy (GC/TOF-MS) coupled with automated library annotation is ideally suited to the acquisition of detailed metabolite profiles of plant extracts (Wagner et al., 2003) and can be applied to other matrices such as blood and faeces. In this study GC/TOF-MS was used to identify metabolites within heathland plants, and to investigate which of these metabolites were present and absent within plasma and faeces from sheep consuming mixtures of these plants.
