Effects of Cold Season Supplementation on Rumen Microbiota of Hybrid Offspring of Jersey Cattle and Yak
In order to investigate the effect of cold season supplementation on the rumen flora of a hybrid breed of Jer-sey cattle and yak(Jersey cattle-yak),14 females in good condition at the age of 5 years were selected for supplementa-tion,divided into BQ group(before supplementation)and BH group(after supplementation),and the experimental pe-riod was 5 months.Fourteen rumen fluid samples were collected before and after the supplementation for 16S rRNA se-quencing.The results showed that a total of 3 581 307 raw reads were obtained from 28 rumen fluid samples,and 3 580 024 clean reads were obtained after quality control.Among them,there were 2 994 663 effective tags,and the ave-rage efficiency ranged from 83.27%to 83.95%.In addition,1 275 OTUs were co-existed in the rumen of Jersey cattle-yak in groups BQ and BH,and 259 and 317 individual OTUs were present in BQ and BH,respectively.The relative abundance of Proteobacteria,Desulfobacterota and Thermoplasmatota in the rumen of Jersey cattle-yak was signifi-cantly increased after supplementation(P<0.05).At the genus level,the relative abundance of Acinetobacter,Comamo-nas and Lysinibacillus in group BH was significantly higher than those in group BQ(P<0.05).PICRUST2 analysis re-vealed that 27 metabolism-related pathways differed significantly between groups BQ and BH(P<0.05),with amino acid metabolism having the highest average abundance,followed by metabolism of cofactors,vitamins and carbohy-drate metabolism.In conclusion,supplemental feeding can increase the abundance of metabolism-related microflora and pathways in the rumen of Jersey cattle-yak,and thus improves its nutrient balance under cold-season grazing con-ditions.