Effects of supplementing banana (Musa spp.) as prebiotic, probiotic (Toyocerin®) and their combination on growth performance, carcass and meat quality in broilers

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of dietary supplementing banana as prebiotic on growth performance, carcass characteristics and meat quality of broiler chickens and also to compare them with commercial probiotic and their combination. The experiment was conducted in 200 day-old male chicks. Birds were randomly allocated to 4 treatment groups (50 chicks per treatment). Dietary treatments consisted of basal diet (CON) or the basal diet with 0.5% of banana as prebiotic (PRE), 0.2% of commercial probiotic Toyocerin® (PRO) or 0.7% of their combination (SYN). The results showed that dietary supplementations significantly affected average daily gain and feed conversion ratio of broilers during the period of 0 to 21 days (p 0.05). There were also no significant differences among dietary treatments in meat quality traits, i.e. pH values, drip loss and thawing loss (p>0.05). The results suggested that bananas could be used as a feed additive to improve growth performance of broiler chickens during 1- to 21-d of age without adverse effects on carcass and meat quality.