MonoGutHealth – For more resilient pigs and poultry

Mono Guth Health

The MonoGutHealth project aims to use innovative nutrition strategies to promote gut microbial colonisation in pigs and chickens in order to strengthen their resilience. The project is supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme and coordinated by the Agroscope researcher, Giuseppe Bee.

MonoGutHealth focuses on reducing disease-related livestock losses by strengthening the gastrointestinal tract. Healthy, resilient young animals require fewer veterinary interventions. According to the motto “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, MonoGutHealth uses innovative technologies to produce pork, eggs, and poultry meat in an animal-friendly and cost-effective manner. In addition to dietary and disease factors, the project will identify microbial factors affecting the gut microbiome of pigs and chickens before birth and in the early neonatal phase. The targeted communication of results will benefit researchers, farmers, and consumers.

The MonoGutHealth project consists of 11 subprojects, which are carried out by 6 research centres and 24 partners from nine countries. This broad-based collaboration guarantees the exchange of the latest knowledge and offers 11 young researchers an entry point into the state of the art research practices. In addition to Agroscope, other Swiss partners are involved in the project, like UFA AG, CSEM (Swiss Centre for Electronics and Microtechnology), and Twenty Green. At the Agroscope Posieux site, two PhD students have been recruited to perform research on the pig microbiome and on intra-uterine growth-restricted piglets. They will be supervised by Catherine Ollagnier and Giuseppe Bee as well as Paolo Trevisi from the University of Bologna. 

Young researchers in portrait

Roberta Ruggeri
Identification and characterization of intra uterine growth retarded piglets
 

Inès Garcia Vinado
A novel non-invasive capsule to study intestinal microbiome of pigs