EFFECTS OF LINSEED AND HEMP SEEDS DIET SUPPLEMENTATION ON CAPRINE RUMEN BACTERIAL DIVERSITY.

The rumen, an heterogeneous microbial community including bacteria, archaea, protozoa and fungi, is a natural habitat that has evolved into an efficient system for lignocellulose degradation. Thanks to this microbiota, ruminants convert the plant materials into digestible compounds, such as volatile fatty acids, their main energetic fuels, and bacterial proteins. The equilibrium of ruminal microbiota is dependent on the diet, which carries fermentation substrates, and the efficiency of ruminal microbiota can be strongly affected by dietary changes. The objective of this study was to assess the effects of linseed or hemp seeds diet supplementation on bacterial diversity in the rumen content of goats using the Next Generation Sequencing. In nine pluriparous Alpine goats fed the same pre-treatment diet for 40 days, ruminal fluid samples were collected, before feeding, using an aesophageal polyethylene probe. After this pre-treatment period the goats were arranged to three dietary treatment groups consisting of control diet (C), control diet supplemented with linseed (L) or hemp (H) seeds. Ninety days later, the same ruminal sample collection procedure was performed. The bacterial DNA was extracted using a protocol described in literature and 16S rRNA gene amplicons on V3-V4 region analyzed by Miseq (Illumina). In the three dietary treatment groups, bacterial community was dominated by Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes with a high abundance of Prevotellaceae, Porphyromonadaceae and Veillonellaceae and a low presence of Ruminococcaceae and Lachnospiraceae. However, L treatment seemed to affect the bacterial population, reducing the microbial diversity.