Improving gut health in poultry

"The proposed content of this book is a timely and comprehensive compilation of current knowledge on a topic that is of considerable interest to poultry scientists worldwide. The internationally renowned contributors as well as the editor are a guarantee of the high standard of the content." Professor Richard Ducatelle, University of Ghent, Belgium This collection summarises current research on the composition and function of the gastrointestinal tract in poultry, the factors that affect its function, and nutritional strategies to optimise poultry nutrition, health and environmental impact. Part 1 begins by summarising advances in sequencing and omics technologies to understand gut function. It then reviews our current understanding of the gut microbiota, the development of the gut microbiome over the life of the bird, and gut function in nutrient processing and immune response. The second part of the book reviews what we know about factors affecting gut function and health. Chapters cover gastrointestinal diseases, the interaction between pathogens and the gut as well the impact of antibiotics. The final group of chapters discuss current research on the effectiveness of feed additives in optimising gut health, including probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, antimicrobials, essential oils and other botanicals as well as cereal grains. With its distinguished editor and team of expert chapter authors, this will be a standard reference for poultry scientists, poultry feed manufacturers and the poultry farming community. Dr. Steven C. Ricke is the Director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Arkansas (UA) and is a faculty member of the Dept. of Food Science and Cellular and Molecular Graduate program. He received the Poultry Sci. Assoc. (PSA) Research Award in 1999, American Egg Board award in 2006 and the PSA Evonik Award for Achievement in Poultry Science in 2019. He was honored as a Texas Agricultural Experiment Station Faculty Fellow in 2002 and the Division of Agriculture - UA John White Outstanding Research Award in 2012. He served as co-founder and former President of the Arkansas Association of Food Protection (AAFP). He was named an AAFP Fellow in 2015, a PSA Fellow in 2017, an International for Food Protection Fellow and University of Wisconsin College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Distinguished Alumni in 2019. He was selected as an American Society for Microbiology Distinguished Lecturer and served from 2015 to 2017.