TY - JOUR
T1 - Profiling of plasma and faeces by FT-IR to differentiate between heathland plant diets offered to zero-grazed sheep
AU - Parveen, I.
AU - Moorby, J. M.
AU - Hirst, W. M.
AU - Morris, S. M.
AU - Fraser, M. D.
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Vince Theobald, John Roberts and Rhun Fychan for assisting with sample collection, and David Baker, Rob Davies, Jim Vale and Geraint Evans for their help with botanical separations. The authors kindly thank Mike Theodorou, Raymond Jones, Janet Taylor and Ana Winters for useful discussions; and the BBSRC for financial support. This work was carried out on samples collected as part of research funded by Defra, the Countryside Council for Wales and English Nature.
PY - 2008/6/23
Y1 - 2008/6/23
N2 - To investigate the relationships between plant composition in a complex diet mixture and intake by sheep, blood and faeces were analysed by Fourier transform mid-infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. Each of four mature Welsh Mountain ewes was maintained, for a period of 9 days, on one of three diets comprising a mixture of heathland plants containing either 100 g/kg (H100), 200 g/kg (H200) or 300 g/kg (H300) heather (Calluna vulgaris) in the fresh matter. Spectra of blood and faeces from each animal were acquired and the data analysed using principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). We also investigated multinomial regression as an extension beyond the pattern recognition state. Animals offered the H300 diet could be consistently separated from animals fed on the H100 and H200 diets by PCA and HCA of plasma data, and these results were consistent with animals on the H300 diet consuming greater quantities of heather. Using faecal spectra, PCA and HCA discriminated between animals on the H200 diet and those on the H100 and H300 diets. Analysis of the plasma and faecal data by the multinomial model indicated that when PCs 4, 5 and 6 of the plasma data and PCs 3 and 4 of the faecal data were selected as covariates, leave-one-out cross-validation (LOO-CV) achieved an accurate dietary classification for 9 out of the 11 animals. In the present study, we have shown the ability to discriminate animals offered closely related diets on the basis of metabolic fingerprints of plasma and faeces.
AB - To investigate the relationships between plant composition in a complex diet mixture and intake by sheep, blood and faeces were analysed by Fourier transform mid-infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. Each of four mature Welsh Mountain ewes was maintained, for a period of 9 days, on one of three diets comprising a mixture of heathland plants containing either 100 g/kg (H100), 200 g/kg (H200) or 300 g/kg (H300) heather (Calluna vulgaris) in the fresh matter. Spectra of blood and faeces from each animal were acquired and the data analysed using principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). We also investigated multinomial regression as an extension beyond the pattern recognition state. Animals offered the H300 diet could be consistently separated from animals fed on the H100 and H200 diets by PCA and HCA of plasma data, and these results were consistent with animals on the H300 diet consuming greater quantities of heather. Using faecal spectra, PCA and HCA discriminated between animals on the H200 diet and those on the H100 and H300 diets. Analysis of the plasma and faecal data by the multinomial model indicated that when PCs 4, 5 and 6 of the plasma data and PCs 3 and 4 of the faecal data were selected as covariates, leave-one-out cross-validation (LOO-CV) achieved an accurate dietary classification for 9 out of the 11 animals. In the present study, we have shown the ability to discriminate animals offered closely related diets on the basis of metabolic fingerprints of plasma and faeces.
KW - Principal component analysis
KW - Herbivory
KW - Heathland plants
KW - Multinomial regression
KW - Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=44849140508&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.anifeedsci.2007.10.002
DO - 10.1016/j.anifeedsci.2007.10.002
M3 - Article
SN - 0377-8401
VL - 144
SP - 65
EP - 81
JO - Animal Feed Science and Technology
JF - Animal Feed Science and Technology
IS - 1-2
ER -