Nor-Feed Newsletter #112: EUROTIER 2024 Edition

Editorial

EUROTIER 2024 is in exactly one week in Hannover, Germany, and the Nor-Feed team is excited to meet you there! We will be at Hall 19/20, booth C08-4 within the French Pavillion waiting for you to discuss about the latest innovations and solutions for animal feed in the livestock industry. This year we have exciting news to share, so we'll share everything in two conferences on November 12 about coccidial risk management and oxidative stress (click here to register) and November 13 with Pig Progress on sow management.  So for this newsletter edition, we are tackling the interest of saponins… and more!

Saponin-based solutions: The importance of standardization

Many plants have a neat trick: they secrete active compounds to defend themselves against external attacks, like diseases. Among these compounds, we find secondary metabolites called saponins. You can find saponins throughout the plant kingdom, from potatoes to yuccas, but some plants have much more saponins than others. These saponin-rich plants are simply called “saponin plants.” Saponins have a particular structure, they are heterosides, with an apolar part (the sapogenin) and a polar part (one or more sugar chains). With their mix of polar and apolar parts, saponins are super diverse. We can classify them into two main families: triterpenoids and steroidal saponins. Beyond these families, the structures and sugar chains can vary, adding even more diversity.

This variability makes saponins really interesting, with a range of different activities. So, to choose the most suitable saponin plants for a specific use, it’s crucial to characterize them. But beyond just characterization, it’s also super important to quantify these active substances. Indeed, working with plants means that active ingredients may vary according to the variety of plant selected, but also according to the part used, seasonal effects, cultivation practices and extraction processes. To ensure constant efficacy, it is necessary to guarantee the same composition and content from one production run to the next.

Many techniques exist to quantify saponins: gravimetric, foaming, spectrophotometric or chromatographic. None of these methods makes it possible to be at the same time accurate, fast, inexpensive with a response similar for the triterpenoid and steroidal saponins. A colorimetric method was developed by Nor-Feed and avoids all the above disadvantages. Parameters used in this method permit to obtain a response similar for steroidal and triterpenoid saponins with a high specificity in complex matrices reducing the sample preparation step. This new patented method, called Q-Sap, is rapid and cost-effective method and gives result similar in term of precision and accuracy compared to the reference method (HPLC-ELSD) that is suitable for routine industrial analyses.

Thanks to this expertise, Nor-Feed has been working for many years on the characterization and standardization of saponin plants to develop the most effective formulas suited for really specific applications.

Norponin® XO: proven coccidial risk management for peace of mind!

Nor-Feed has used its knowledge of plants to select the best saponin plants for managing coccidial risk.

Norponin® XO is today THE natural reference solution on the market, which thanks to its specific blend of saponin plants, is AS EFFICIENT AS chemical and fermentation coccidiostats for animal performance.

Its effectiveness on performances has been recognized by the scientific committee through publication in the journal Frontiers of its contribution in coccidial risk management. The article's conclusions were clear: “Supplementations with Monensin and Norponin® XO were able to reduce intestinal lesions occurrence.” (Click here to access the full publication)

And that’s not all!

These results were confirmed by a meta-analysis based on numerous other trials carried out under experimental conditions all over the world. In these studies, intestinal lesion scores and growth performance were measured.  Norponin XO demonstrates that it is AS EFFICIENT AS other chemicals and fermentation coccidiostats for animal performance.

Today, Norponin® XO is used all over the world in different production methods and under different conditions. Nor-Feed's work on selection and standardization of this effective solution, has led to feedback from the field with always the same conclusions: in every study, Norponin® XO helps maintain performance

To discover our effective solution Norponin® XO, please do not hesitate to contact us for further information.

Sources upon request.