Late last month, Danisco Animal Nutrition and Health (part of IFF) announced that it had received EU-wide regulatory approval for two of its feed solutions for poultry: Axtra® XAP – a multi-enzyme blend and Syncra® AVI – an enzyme-probiotic complex.
Noting that the products are already in use in other major markets from the Americas to Asia-Pacific, José Luis Ecija Roux, marketing director for EMEA at the company, asserted that the recent authorisation “empowers us to unleash the remarkable potential of these two exceptional in-feed products to poultry producers across the region.” Today, he talks us through the evidence supporting those claims, the benefits that the two products can provide to an industry pressured to use more local ingredients, improve animal health and well-being, and reduce costs.
[Feedinfo] Speaking first about Axtra® XAP: can you start by presenting the product? What data do you have for the improvements that it can provide in poultry?
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[José Luis Ecija Roux] Axtra® XAP is a xylanase, amylase and protease enzyme combination that has been shown to increase energy efficiency and improve bird performance in both corn-based and mixed-grain diets. By optimizing nutrient availability, this unique feed solution enables greater flexibility in dietary formulations and radically reduces feed costs as a result. Feed efficiency is also improved, with a 5% (9 points) improvement in broiler feed conversion ratio (FCR) achieved on average. At the same time, Axtra® XAP gives producers the scope to align operations with consumer-led demands and new operational practices that continue to shape the industry, such as free-range production and all-vegetable diets. |
José Luis Ecija Roux |
[Feedinfo] What differentiates Axtra® XAP from other carbohydrase/protease enzymes available to the poultry market – or indeed, from IFF’s Avizyme® product, which is also a combination of xylanase, amylase, and protease?
[José Luis Ecija Roux] Avizyme® has been successfully used in the market for many years but diets have changed, so we’ve developed Axtra® XAP to meet the current need for greater flexibility in the use of raw materials. Using IFF best-in-class technology and bioengineering, we have created an optimal formulation containing proven enzymes with robust thermostable coating. With efficacy measured by the amount of nutrients released from each enzyme, this translates to higher matrix values in feed formulations.
Axtra® XAP contains a new amylase that optimizes starch digestibility and makes it more bioefficacious than Avizyme®. It also features a protease to hydrolyze protein chains to amino acids and reduce the negative effects of trypsin inhibitors, while the right proportion of intrinsically heat stable xylanase optimizes fibre digestibility to allow the inclusion of more fibrous components and achieve lower dietary costs. This means our new solution delivers more benefits than any other enzyme combination currently available on the market.
[Feedinfo] What kinds of diets or production issues can Axtra® XAP help address? What role do you see it playing as parts of the poultry industry embrace concepts like free-range production, all-vegetable diets, or the use of local (and possibly less digestible) ingredients?
[José Luis Ecija Roux] In markets where high fibre ingredients are easily available, their use can substantially bring down feed costs. However, adding these ingredients makes the diet more nutritionally complex as it increases fiber and protein antinutrients, and includes more indigestible protein and amino acids – leading to reduced animal performance and increased environmental pollution.
Axtra® XAP helps customers adapt to these new conditions by improving feed digestibility, nutrient absorption, and feed intake. It also brings sustainability benefits as there is a decrease in the accumulation of antinutrients and less undigested material. Furthermore, by enabling greater flexibility through locally sourced ingredients, Axtra® XAP directly impacts and reduces carbon footprint.
[Feedinfo] Meanwhile, Syncra® AVI adds the probiotic element to a carbohydrase/protease enzyme solution. What specific probiotics does it include, and what advantages are those probiotics adding to the mix?
[José Luis Ecija Roux] Syncra® AVI is a synergistic combination of enzymes and Bacillus probiotics, designed to maximize nutrient digestion, gut health, and performance. Its unique formulation contains a blend of enzymes which improves nutrient digestibility and flock uniformity, as well as multi-strain Bacillus probiotics formulated to actively protect against health challenges and accelerate immune development. The enzymes and probiotics in Syncra® AVI deliver complementary modes of action that provide more available nutrients than single component additives. In addition, they enable a more balanced gut microbiota, as shown through an improved gut structure.
[Feedinfo] Under what conditions can Syncra® AVI provide the most benefit to EU producers? Is it most useful for poultry operations facing specific health challenges?
[José Luis Ecija Roux] When you are producing millions of birds a week, it can seem very hard to ensure non-beneficial bacteria don’t get the upper hand. One of the most important counter strategies is ensuring the development of a balanced gut microbiota to support strong growth performance from an early age – but this is challenging for several reasons.
The viscosity of the gut contents plays an important role in the development of the microbial population, especially in the small intestine. However, undigested nutrients flowing to the hind gut can directly disrupt this delicate microbiome in favour of non-beneficial bacteria. This impacts the dynamic balance of the mucus layer, epithelial cells, and immune cells and can lead to bacterial overgrowth - known as dysbacteriosis – which tends to impact birds between 20 and 30 days of age, potentially causing coccidiosis and necrotic enteritis (NE). With symptoms including malabsorption of feed, diarrhoea, and damage to the intestine, these conditions ultimately lead to diseased birds, poor growth performance, lack of flock uniformity, and increased mortality.
Syncra® AVI was developed to bring robustness to flocks by protecting them against such health challenges. With combined enzyme and probiotic modes of action, it provides more available nutrients than single component additives to create a more balanced gut microbiota. Importantly, multiple trials carried out by independent research organizations have shown that Syncra® AVI improves performance and reduces overall production costs, while also supporting gut health.
[Feedinfo] Both Axtra® XAP and Syncra® AVI are blends – Axtra® combines different kinds of enzymes, while Syncra® brings together enzymes and probiotics. Why does IFF believe that blended solutions offer the greatest value for customers?
[José Luis Ecija Roux] At IFF, we believe that a favorable nutribiotic state - where nutrition, the microbiome and host gut and immune function are balanced – will deliver the strongest results. By feeding the animal and its microbiome with the right combination of nutrients, substrates, and additives to promote a healthy environment in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT), it allows more nutrients to be digested and absorbed by the gut. Optimizing this interaction therefore creates a favorable nutribiotic state and achieves peak performance in the animal. That’s why we must now consider how everything fed to the animal combines and interacts in the GIT. In this context, combined technologies add value to broiler producers by enabling ingredient flexibility, reducing pollution, and enhancing gut health via increased beneficial bacterial populations.
[Feedinfo] What’s next for IFF in the enzymes and probiotics spaces? Both of these products are widely available in major markets from the Americas through Asia-Pacific: is there further territorial expansion in sight? When it comes to R&D: are there new products, species, or applications where you are focusing your attention or resources?
[José Luis Ecija Roux] We continue to invest heavily in our nutritional health portfolio and develop innovative solutions to address unmet needs of livestock producers. We are expanding our offering in the poultry industry by expanding the application of existing technologies to inhibit growth of undesirable bacteria populations like Enterococcus or Campylobacter, which are meant to reduce broiler performance. Moreover, we believe there is still room to improve diet digestibility in swine diets, which challenges will be met with new solutions. We also remain committed to sharing key results from our research program, with Dr Kirsty Gibbs presenting several abstracts and our work in waterline at this year’s PSA - including “Combining feed additive technologies to reduce the impact of necrotic enteritis”. Equally important to our long-term strategy is an ongoing focus on our operations, where continued investment in our capacity and overall operational efficiency will enable us to better serve our core markets.
Published in association with Danisco Animal Nutrition and Health, part of IFF
