Unlocking Poultry Gut Microbiome with AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) holds the potential to simplify the complexities of the poultry gut microbiome, assisting producers in optimizing flock performance and health. The microbiome comprises over 800 identified bacterial species, with countless more awaiting classification. Its role in poultry development is crucial, yet its intricacy has historically posed challenges in correlating it with production outcomes.

The poultry gut microbiome concept is relatively new, but the analysis of its components offers insights into how feed additives, nutrients, and management strategies can positively or negatively affect poultry health. Variations across breeds, temperature fluctuations, heat stress, differing feed compositions, and environmental factors all shape the microbiome’s composition, increasing the analytical challenges traditional research methods face.

Luisa Gene, the technology lead at Cargill, noted the difficulty scientists encounter in linking performance metrics to the microbiome due to its complexity. She emphasizes that AI’s capability to analyze large datasets unlocks the potential to correlate various factors effectively. This powerful application enables the identification of specific biomarkers tied to poultry performance and can predict pathogen presence — such as Salmonella and Campylobacter— with an impressive accuracy of up to 90%, based solely on microbiome composition.

Surprisingly, the practical application of this technology is quite straightforward. Producers can collect non-invasive cloaca swabs from around 24 birds per farm at strategic ages. These swabs are subsequently placed in tubes containing a denaturant solution that initiates DNA extraction right away, thus mitigating contamination risks and eliminating the need for refrigeration during transportation.

Gene further elaborated that AI elucidates distinct “microbiome signatures” under various conditions, whether it be concerning unexplained mortality, poor litter quality, or unsatisfactory feed conversion ratios. Each farm exhibits its unique microbiome profile, fostering tailored nutritional and management strategies. The understanding is that maintaining a balanced microbiome is crucial; it helps minimize infection risks and reduces the likelihood of developing diseases.

The success of AI in this domain is significantly tied to the size of the datasets involved. Larger datasets enable more precise pattern recognition and yield actionable insights, far surpassing traditional analytical approaches.