Dove Hugh, Mayes Robert W
CSIRO Plant Industry, GPO Box 1600, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
Nat Protoc. 2006;1(4):1680-97. doi: 10.1038/nprot.2006.225.
Plant-wax markers can be used for estimating forage intake, diet composition and supplement intake in grazing livestock, wild ruminants and other mammals. We describe protocols for using the saturated hydrocarbons (alkanes) of plant wax as markers for estimating fecal output, intake and digestibility. Procedures for investigating digestion kinetics are also discussed. Alkanes can also be used to estimate diet composition and the procedures required to do this are also described, including the special case where supplementary feed is treated as a component of the diet composition estimate. The long-chain alcohols (LCOHs) and very long-chain fatty acids (VLCFAs) of plant wax show particular promise for discriminating a greater number of species in the diet. The use of all these plant-wax markers in nutrition studies depends on having quantitative, repeatable and mutually compatible assay procedures for alkanes, LCOHs and VLCFAs; we present protocols for these assays in detail. Analysis of a single sample of feces or plant material for all these plant-wax markers can be completed within 2 days; however, it is possible to process up to 50 samples (analyzed in duplicate) per week.
植物蜡标记物可用于估算放牧家畜、野生反刍动物及其他哺乳动物的采食量、日粮组成和补饲摄入量。我们描述了使用植物蜡饱和烃（烷烃）作为标记物来估算粪便排出量、摄入量和消化率的方案。还讨论了研究消化动力学的程序。烷烃也可用于估算日粮组成，本文也描述了所需的程序，包括将补充饲料视为日粮组成估算的一个组成部分这种特殊情况。植物蜡的长链醇（LCOHs）和极长链脂肪酸（VLCFAs）在区分日粮中更多物种方面显示出特别的前景。在营养研究中使用所有这些植物蜡标记物，取决于对烷烃、LCOHs和VLCFAs有定量、可重复且相互兼容的分析程序；我们详细介绍了这些分析的方案。对粪便或植物材料的单个样本进行所有这些植物蜡标记物的分析可在2天内完成；然而，每周最多可处理50个样本（一式两份分析）。
