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Breeding for ‘HealthyHay’: Can We Optimise Plant Polyphenols in Legumes for Ruminant Nutrition, Animal Health and Environmental Sustainability?

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Quantitative Traits Breeding for Multifunctional Grasslands and Turf

Abstract

A small number of forage legumes are of great interest for sustainable livestock production because they contain various bioactive compounds, such as polyphenols, tannins and oxidases. The recently completed EU Marie Curie Research Training Network (‘HealthyHay’) reported large intra-species variation not only in agronomic characteristics but also in bioactive constituents during a detailed screening of a sainfoin (Onobrychis viciifolia) germplasm collection. Tannins, for example, showed considerable quantitative and qualitative differences: contents varied five-fold, the average polymer size varied seven-fold, prodelphinidins accounted for between 53 and 95 % and trans-flavanols for between 12 and 34 % of the tannins. Large variations were also observed amongst monomeric polyphenols and between enzymes involved in their biosynthesis. Total flavonol and flavan-3-ol contents were important variables for distinguishing between sainfoin accessions and dihydroflavonol 4-reductase and flavonol synthase proved particularly useful for screening purposes. Not surprisingly, considerable variation was also observed in terms of the effectiveness of the different accessions against parasitic worms, coccidia and generation of ruminal fermentation products.

This EU ‘HealthyHay’ project used existing and established several new techniques for screening legumes for their bioactive compounds, but also for their effects in terms of anti-parasitic, nutritional and environmental benefits. These included several different tannin methods, in vitro anthelmintic assays, an anti-coccidial assay, an automated pressure evaluation system (APES) for volatile fatty acid and methane production, a pepsin-cellulase digestibility assay and ensiling studies. Further work will be needed to identify the optimum concentrations and compositions of the bioactive compounds and to develop molecular markers for this underexploited forage legume. Recent research on Populus indicated that the qualitative and quantitative tannin traits are under genetic control and thus amenable to plant breeding. It is likely that tannin traits are also under genetic control in sainfoin and that tannin composition can therefore be optimised to maximise specific benefits.

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Acknowledgements

The European Commission funded the ‘HealthyHay’ Marie Curie Research Training Network (Grant no. MRTN-CT-2006-035805) and currently funds the ‘LegumePlus’ Marie Curie Initial Training Network (Grant no. PITN-GA-2011-289377). The valuable contributions of all PhD students, postdoctoral fellows and their supervisors are gratefully acknowledged.

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  1. Chemistry & Biochemistry Laboratory, School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading, 1, Earley Gate, 236, Reading, RG6 6AT, UK

    Irene Mueller-Harvey

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  1. Irene Mueller-Harvey
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Correspondence to Irene Mueller-Harvey .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Forage Crops, Kruševac, Serbia

    Dejan Sokolović

  2. SDAR, INRA, Lusignan, France

    Christian Huyghe

  3. Institute for Forage Crops, Kruševac, Serbia

    Jasmina Radović

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Mueller-Harvey, I. (2014). Breeding for ‘HealthyHay’: Can We Optimise Plant Polyphenols in Legumes for Ruminant Nutrition, Animal Health and Environmental Sustainability?. In: Sokolović, D., Huyghe, C., Radović, J. (eds) Quantitative Traits Breeding for Multifunctional Grasslands and Turf. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9044-4_42

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