Already we have the second issue of the Journal for 2018. Several topics are represented in this issue, including novel feed ingredients, minerals, antioxidation, choice feeding, welfare, human health products (eggs) and pathogen detection methods. In addition, we have an interesting review on enzymes, which reflects the recent talk given at the WPSA UK Spring meeting, held in Dublin, by Dr Mike Bedford on his receipt of the Gordon Memorial Medal – which is very well deserved. Dr Bedford is well known in the poultry world for his extensive and pioneering work in the world of enzymes, and I have been privileged to work with Mike over the years, going back to my early commercial work at Finnfeeds International in the 1990s. He is an exceptionally able scientist, never afraid to confront technical challenges or to look at problems in new ways, as well as being an approachable and friendly face in the industry. Congratulations to him, and to his lovely and supportive wife Linda.

There are many events coming up in 2018, including the excellent Hafez turkey meeting in Berlin, the 6th Mediterranean Poultry Summit, both in June, the PSA (with the US WPSA branch meeting) in San Antonio in July and the 25th European Poultry Conference in Croatia in September, where the next WPSA board meeting will be held. Various branch meetings are happening, and full details can be found on our website (www.wpsa.com). Do please support these events, as they not only provide useful and interesting scientific sessions, but also provide a great networking opportunity.

One issue that is becoming more prominent for all journals is the future of publishing peer reviewed papers. This is something that has changed greatly in recent years, and continues to change, especially with the advent of open access. This is something that is being discussed in all spheres of publishing, as the costs of open access are still high and have to be borne by authors. The WPSJ is in a strong position, as it does not charge submission charges to authors, making open access rather more affordable for authors. All papers are eligible for open access – details of which are on the submission website. In addition, we are seeing a shift in regional souring of the papers submitted, which is something that needs to be addressed to keep the journal content balanced, and which I am focussing on. For anyone who is interested in publishing a review, but perhaps needs some assistance or advice, do feel free to email me with your idea or draft. The editorial office is happy to help young or new authors get their work out in the public domain.

Dr Lucy Waldron

Editor

Glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) was described as a selenoprotein in 1973 and, since then, a great body of information has been accumulated to validate its important role in the antioxidant defence network in all animals, including poultry. The GSH-Px family includes at least eight members, and four of them (GSH-Px1, GSH-Px2, GSH-Px3 and GSH-Px4) are shown to be selenoproteins in animals. They are characterised by species- and tissue-specificity in their expression and activity. An optimal Se status in tissues/body is key for maximum expression of GSH-Px and therefore, in avian research GSH-Px activity is widely used as a biomarker for determining Se status and requirements. On the other hand, GSH-Px is an inducible enzyme and its activity depends on the level of stress and can be used as an index of antioxidant defences. In poultry production two forms of Se-dependent GSH-Px (GSH-Px1 and GSH-Px4) have received most attention. The aim of this paper is to review GSH-Px properties and functions in relation to poultry biology with special emphasis to its role in chicken adaptation to various stress conditions. Recent advances in selenoprotein identification and characterisation in relation to poultry Se status, dietary sources of Se and stress conditions can shed light on the roles of GSH-Px in avian biology.

Conventional feeding systems for laying hens rely on a complete feed available ad libitum in mash, pelleted or crumble form. When complete feeds are used, intake is mainly controlled by the hens’ energy requirement and feed presentation, but the birds cannot adjust their consumption to other nutritional needs and thus over-consume to cover the calcium needed for egg shell formation. Sequential, loose-mix and choice feeding offer birds the opportunity to select different diets in the short term. These feeding strategies have been proposed as alternative feeding systems whose main objectives are to match nutrient supply to individual requirements during the daily changes induced by the temporal sequence of the egg formation. This review discusses some findings related to the use of whole cereals and of alternating low and high energy or protein diets, conditions which may improve feed utilisation efficiency. In addition, the adjustment of calcium and phosphorus levels during the day can have benefits in terms of egg production and quality. This review explores the physiological basis for sequential, loose-mix and choice feeding and evaluates the impact of these systems on egg production and quality.

Animal welfare has become an important issue in poultry production. Concern about poultry welfare has mainly been expressed in industrialised countries. Since trade of poultry products is highly internationalised, welfare aspects have to be considered by all countries involved. This paper reviews the changes in the attitude to animal welfare in Western societies and the related development of regulations and standards, the impact of high welfare standards on production costs and on international trade of poultry products and finally, the influence of different stakeholders on poultry production and marketing. From the 1960s onwards, animal welfare activities have been focused on farm animals kept under ‘industrial’ conditions, such as caged laying hens. Consequently, the management conditions for laying hens in Europe have been regulated in detail by national laws and EU-Directives. Meanwhile, conventional cages have been banned in the EU and welfare activities are now directed towards other issues, such as beak-trimming and killing day-old chicks of layer lines. All measures which are considered to improve the welfare of animals increase cost of production. Hence, differences in national welfare regulations are expected to relocate poultry production to countries with low welfare standards. There is a tendency that important retailers and food chains use welfare as a marketing argument and establish high price premium labels. Standards which are established and controlled by stakeholders of the poultry market are independent of national welfare legislation. This will lead to harmonisation of welfare standards on an international level. Most welfare labels have been developed by retailers in cooperation with welfare-oriented NGOs. There is a new trend in Germany where retailers and farmers organisations develop welfare schemes and poultry producers are paid an extra allowance for welfare-friendly production. This system ensures that poultry farmers are reimbursed for the welfare-related costs.

In the past, trace minerals have been inadequately considered by poultry nutritionists, as demonstrated by the scarce availability of literature. The practice of using high safety margins between requirements and dietary concentrations and the relative low cost of these essential minerals are possible reasons for this. Environmental considerations and regulations limiting trace mineral supply and improvements in analytical methods to detect putative contaminants in mineral sources have led to a need to a re-examination of trace mineral requirements. In addition, new knowledge regarding trace mineral roles in bone metabolism, anti-oxidant status, homeostatic regulation, product quality, immunology and the development of novel trace mineral sources have favoured, for the past 15 years, interests in optimising trace mineral nutrition considering other parameters than solely the bird performance. This review analyses the role of essential trace minerals (mainly Zn, Cu, Fe, Mn, I, Se) in broiler and laying hen nutrition. This work aims to highlight the evaluation of trace mineral requirement, the bioavailability of trace mineral sources, especially in regards with phytate antagonism, and the main functions of trace minerals in egg, eggshell and meat quality. The impact of trace minerals on the environment (toxicity to plants and microorganisms) is considered and nutritional means to reduce the risk of environmental contamination will be explored. Finally, the possibilities of poultry product's enrichment in some trace minerals for the benefit of human health will be explored.

It is known that glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) belongs to the first and second levels of the antioxidant network and is involved in the regulation of many important cellular pathways including maintenance of the redox balance and signalling. In poultry the GSH-Px family includes four Se-dependent forms of the enzyme, however only GSH-Px1 and GSH-Px4 are well characterised and have received substantial attention as important enzymes participating in chicken adaptation to commercially-relevant stresses. The aim of this review is to analyse the current data on relationships between various stress conditions and the GSH-Px activity in poultry with special emphasis to selenium status and nutritional supplements. Indeed, the published literature indicates that there is a range of different nutritional (Se supplementation, antioxidants, plant extracts, probiotics, drugs, mycotoxins) and environmental (temperature stress, transportation, disease) factors modulating GSH-Px activity and/or expression in different tissues from poultry. These inducible enzymes are involved in adaptation to stress and Se supplementation in optimal concentrations whereby form is key for antioxidant system maintenance under stress conditions in commercial poultry production.

Anthocyanins are flavonoids widely spread in various plant species as a major phyto-pigment. In recent years, interest in using anthocyanins as a feed ingredient has increased markedly owing to their health and other benefits. Anthocyanins possess various pharmacological properties, including anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, anticancer, antidiabetic, neuroprotective, anti-obesity and antioxidant effects. Dietary consumption of anthocyanins has revealed benefits in animal performance. Little is known about health-promoting effects of anthocyanins in avian species, but anthocyanin-rich dried fruits have shown positive effects on certain pathological conditions and health promoting markers in human and other animals. This review aims to gather information regarding health benefits of anthocyanins and highlight therapeutic and potential health beneficial effects of anthocyanins for poultry. Additionally, it explores these biologically important flavonoids as alternative ingredients in poultry feed to replace synthetic nutrients and medicines. The available literature reports studies involving use of anthocyanins focused on human, mice and in vitro models. However, there is a need to explore mechanism of action at molecular level to understand potential beneficial effects of anthocyanins in avian species.

Flavonoids are natural compounds derived from different types of vegetables, fruits, and medicinal herbal plants. Hesperidin, a flavanone (a class of flavonoids) glycoside is found abundantly in citrus fruits such as oranges, lemons tangerines and limes and is known to possess significant benefits, such as anti-inflammatory, anti-stress, antioxidant, growth promoting, anticancer and immunological properties. Hesperidin enhances mucosal and humoral immunity by increasing intestinal intraepithelial lymphocyte numbers, lymphoid organs (thymus, spleen and bursa) indices, as well as improving anti-avian influenza and anti-Newcastle disease antibody titres in poultry. In addition, hesperidin is a strong chain-breaking antioxidant that provides potent cellular antioxidant defence against the damaging effects induced by peroxide hydrogen. As a natural antioxidant, hesperidin could help mitigate heat stress during summer by decreasing heterophil-to-lymphocyte ratios, and quenching reactive oxygen species generated by summer heat stress. The aim of this review was to elucidate the biological effects and health benefits of hesperidin as an alternative of synthetic immune boosters and growth promoters in poultry diets.

The use of non-starch polysaccharide (NSP) enzymes has increased in recent years with most of the growth coming from the market segment which uses non-viscous diets. A variety of product choices are available to the feed industry. These range from mono-component, single enzymes, to cocktails of more than one activity, to so-called ‘complex’ enzymes, displaying, in addition to the main activity, several non-targeted (i.e. quality controlled or assured) activities within one product. The relative abundance of the substrate or the number of substrates presented by a given diet may not be viewed as the sole criterion for the fitness of an enzyme solution. An argument can be made that NSP enzymes should not be considered as classical digestive enzymes and any response may not be regarded simply as a function of the extent of in vitro or in vivo substrate hydrolysis. The idea of having additional non-NSP or NSP activities to ‘strengthen’ a xylanase response, as well as the notion ‘complex diet needs a complex enzyme’ appear to lack sufficient scientific backing. Measures based on alternative responses e.g. gut morphology, nutrient or energy digestibility, gut-flora and its metabolites or fermentation profiles, are useful in developing a wider understanding of the phenomenon but require careful interpretation as the stand-alone criteria of usefulness of an NSP enzyme. Performance data is always the ultimate judge of the efficacy of a feed enzyme. This review addresses the practical question of selecting an NSP enzyme. The aim is to discuss the data supporting some of the common views held in the industry today, and how these views significantly influence the process of selecting an NSP enzyme for commercial in-feed application.

Traditional diagnostic capabilities (serology and culture) are not enough to monitor the poultry infections efficiently. For effective control of poultry infections, a regular program incorporating simple and cost-effective molecular diagnostics is necessary. On this rationale, it is possible to present working molecular diagnostic technology that would work equally well in field as well as in the laboratory. Recently, the loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay has emerged as simple and inexpensive diagnostic tool for the molecular detection of various animal pathogens. To perform LAMP, no specialised instruments (e.g. thermal cycler) are required, permitting its use in developing countries. Various reliable LAMP assays have been reported for the detection of different poultry pathogens. However, still there is a need to improve the sensitivity, specificity, reproducibility, user-friendliness, delivery to end-user and affordability of LAMP assays. This article reviews current LAMP assays available for the molecular detection of important viral, bacterial and protozoan pathogens of poultry. It focuses on the various aspects of LAMP for the diagnosis of important poultry pathogens based upon pathogen type, specimen, target genes, LAMP primer types, detection limits, fluorescent detectors and LAMP chemistry used. This paper provides updates on principle, instrumentation, basic methodology, quantification capability, reagents and kits used currently in performing LAMP.

Increasing the structural components in the diet, namely through including coarse grain particles in diets and manipulating the dietary fibre composition, has been shown to improve gut health, feed utilisation and production efficiency. This is primarily because structural components physically stimulate activity in the fore gut. An example of this is dietary non-starch polysaccharides (NSP), namely insoluble NSP, which have been shown to instigate beneficial effects on gut health, litter quality and nutrient utilisation, by increasing crop and gizzard activity, stimulating digestive enzyme production and enhancing bacterial fermentation in the hind gut. However, there is a lack of consistency with regard to the direct effects of dietary fibre on chicken health and production. The aim of this review therefore is to explore the impact of feeding different sources of fibre and different size grain particles on gut health and microflora, nutrient utilisation, performance and litter quality in broilers.

Designer foods of animal origin are produced either by feeding specific diets, or using new techniques like genetic engineering, cross-breeding. Designer eggs are an important type of functional foods. With the advancement of poultry industry, there is a rising interest in poultry biotechnology for altering the egg composition by genetic and nutritional manipulations for human health. This can be done by modifying cholesterol concentration and its fractions, lipid profile, fatty acids, amino acids and minerals or through adding therapeutic pharmaceutical molecules. Designer eggs provide vegetarian, safe, immune powered, specialty or organic foodstuffs which can have improved vitamins, minerals, balanced ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids, lowered total cholesterol, additional boost of antibodies and essential pigments such as carotenoids. From the relevant scientific literature, functional eggs can be considered as human designer food. This review describes the concepts of designer eggs and their health benefits and nutritional values.

Cinnamon is a common spice obtained from the bark of the cinnamon tree (Cinnamomum zeylanicum). It has been used for culinary, as well as medicinal, purposes since ancient times in various countries. Apart from substantial amounts of several nutrients, including carbohydrates, proteins, choline, vitamins (A, K, C, B3), and minerals, several biological active compounds are present in the extract of oil, which contribute to immunomodulatory, antioxidant, antiviral, lowering blood cholesterol, antimicrobial, lipid-lowering, antihypertension, anti-inflammatory, antitumor, gastroprotective, antidiabetic, neuroprotective and blood purifying properties. Cinnamon roots serve as a hepatic stimulant by improving bile production, eliminating toxins, restoring electrolyte balance and regulating hydration and can be used for enhancing digestion. In addition, nutritional properties of cinnamon powder include positive effects regarding growth, digestion, enhanced activity of gut microflora, improvement of immune response, as well as improved feed efficiency and health improvement of poultry birds. Recently, research focus has been directed towards supplementing broiler diets with cinnamon powder as a phytobiotic in order to replace synthetic growth promoters. After reviewing the literature, it was found that the research at the molecular level to elucidate the mechanisms behind the potential of cinnamon as a feed additive in poultry is limited, despite its promising impacts. Furthermore, supplementation doses vary significantly, i.e., from 0.02 to 7%. So, the aim of this review was to compile the published research related to cinnamon. Hence explore its beneficial properties, find out its optimal dosage for uses by veterinarians, researchers, and nutritionists, as well as its potential to use as a natural feed additive to replace the synthetic antibiotic growth promoters in poultry feed.

The gut has great importance for the commercial success of poultry production. Numerous ion transporters, exchangers, and channels are present on both the apical and the basolateral membrane of intestinal epithelial cells, and their differential expression along the crypt-villus axis within the various intestinal segments ensures efficient intestinal absorption and effective barrier function. Recent studies have shown that intensive production systems, microbial exposure, and nutritional management significantly affect intestinal physiology and intestinal ion transport. Dysregulation of normal intestinal ion transport is manifested as diarrhoea, malabsorption, and intestinal inflammation resulting into poor production efficiency. This review discusses the basic mechanisms involved in avian intestinal ion transport and the impact of development during growth, nutritional and environmental alterations, and intestinal microbial infections on it. The effect of intestinal microbial infections on avian intestinal ion transport depends on factors such as host immunity, pathogen virulence, and the mucosal organisation of the particular intestinal segment.

The World’s Poultry Science Journal is indebted to Prof J.A. Castello, Prof D.K. Flock, Dr M. Tixier-Boichard, Dr S. Cherepanov and Prof N. Yang for the translations of these summaries.

Dr Pearse Lyons died on 8th March 2018 aged 73 in Lexington Kentucky due to an acute lung condition that developed during his recovery from heart surgery. Dr Lyons was a friend and mentor to many scientists and business people across the world, myself included. He had a great sense of humour, and considered that work should involve friends and fun, as well as achievement.

Dr Lyons had a degree from University College Dublin (Biochemistry), an MSc in brewing and fermentation from the British School of Malting and Brewing (now part of University of Birmingham, UK) and a PhD in biochemistry from University of Birmingham, UK, obtained in 1971. He was given an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 2004. In the 1970s he worked in the brewing industry and emigrated to the USA in 1976, where he started the Alltech company in 1980 with a US$10,000 loan, working from his garage. He was one of the original pioneers in specialist animal feed ingredients, involved in the early days of enzymes and pre-biotics. His business took off in the mid-1980s, and some of the original staff from these times are still with the company, which retains a family feel to it, even with expansion to its current levels.

On a personal note, I have worked with Dr Lyons for many years, and, like so many others, have great tales regarding those times. The Alltech Lecture Tour was an annual event, where participants lived in close proximity on the company jet for many days on end, surviving the punishing schedule (2-3 countries per day) on biscuits and Kentucky Ale, all with good humour and a great sense of camaraderie. He never ceased in his efforts to try to drag me out for a morning run, somewhat unsuccessfully I might add. More importantly, he taught me to push the boundaries of my scientific abilities and not be afraid to do something new.

Dr Lyons always encouraged and promoted animal science, sponsoring many PhDs, encouraging young scientists in their work and conducting large amounts of commercial research in all species. Dr Lyons instigated various philanthropic ventures and published a large volume of scientific papers and books, and was a strong advocate of communication in science, especially relating to practical and commercial applications.

Our thoughts must go to his family, his lovely wife Deirdre, daughter Aoife, son Mark and daughter-in-law Holly, as well as to the rest of the ‘family’ both working in and with Alltech around the world. As Mark said of his father, “He saw farther into the horizon than anyone in the industry, and we, as his team, are committed to delivering on the future he envisioned. He planted seeds that will produce a bountiful harvest for the world in the years to come.”

The family is encouraging donations in his memory to the Alltech ACE Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit organisation that funds a variety of philanthropic endeavours around the world from disaster relief to primary schools in Haiti. Donations may be made at alltech.com/pearselyons.

A lovely man and a leader of innovation in animal science, who will be sadly missed by all.

Dr Lucy Waldron

March 2018