Rosemary distillation residues reduce lipid oxidation, increase alpha-tocopherol content and improve fatty acid profile of lamb meat

The experiment studied the effects of rosemary distillation residues (RR) intake on lamb meat quality, oxidative stability and fatty acid (FA) profile. Barbarine lambs of Control group were fed 600 g of hay, which was substituted by 600 g of pellets containing 60 and 87% of RR for RR60 and RR87 groups; all animals received 600 g of concentrate. Meat protein and fat content was similar for 3 treatments. Lipid oxidation was strongly reduced with RR diets. Both RR diets resulted in a higher a- tocopherol content in muscle. The metmyoglobin and deoxymyoglobin percentages were similar for all groups; however oxymyoglobin was higher for RR groups. The saturated (SFA) and unsaturated FAs (UFA) were unaffected by the diets. However, the PUFA, n-6 and n-3 were higher for RR groups. In conclusion, rosemary residues resulted in higher vitamin E content, so it enhanced the oxidative status and improved the fatty acid profile of lamb meat

Effects of using rosemary residues as a cereal substitute in concentrate on vitamin e, antioxidant activity, color, lipid oxidation, and fatty acid profile of barbarine lamb meat

The shortage of some ingredients and, consequently, the continuous increase in the price of feed encourage the search for other alternatives to maintain animal production and enhance its products. In this line, the use of aromatic plant by-products in animal diet has been recently and widely considered, given their richness in bioactive compounds. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of the inclusion of rosemary residues (RR) and protein sources on lamb meat quality. The experiment was carried out on 24 male Barbarine lambs (3 months old) with an average body weight (BW) of 17.8 ± 2.6 kg, which were divided into three homogeneous groups according to BW. The diet comprised 600 g of oat hay and 600 g of concentrate. Three types of concentrate were evaluated: commercial concentrate as the control group (C); rosemary residues (RR) plus soybean meal as the RRS group, and RR plus faba bean as the RRF group. After an experimental period of 65 days, lambs were slaughtered. The inclusion of RR in both concentrates increased the a-tocopherol and total polyphenol content in meat and protected meat against discoloration (high red index and chroma after 9 days of storage) but did not affect meat lipid oxidation, which was similar for all groups. The FA profile was affected by the inclusion of RR, with no effect from the source of protein (faba bean or soybean). The inclusion of RR in the concentrate increased the C18:2 n-6, C18:3n-3, C20:4 n-6, C20:5 n-3, and C22:5 n-3 content (p < 0.05). Consequently, the inclusion of RR also increased the total polyunsaturated FA (p < 0.05) and the ratio of polyunsaturated FA to saturated FA (p < 0.05). The results of this study demonstrate that concentrate based on RR could be useful for lamb meat production by improving the nutritional quality of meat, especially the fatty acid profile. In addition, soybean meal can be replaced by faba bean in lamb concentrate without affecting meat quality. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

High-Dimensional Similarity Search with Quantum-Assisted Variational Autoencoder

Recent progress in quantum algorithms and hardware indicates the potential importance of quantum computing in the near future. However, finding suitable application areas remains an active area of research. Quantum machine learning is touted as a potential approach to demonstrate quantum advantage within both the gate-model and the adiabatic schemes. For instance, the Quantum-assisted Variational Autoencoder has been proposed as a quantum enhancement to the discrete VAE. We extend on previous work and study the real-world applicability of a QVAE by presenting a proof-of-concept for similarity search in large-scale high-dimensional datasets. While exact and fast similarity search algorithms are available for low dimensional datasets, scaling to high-dimensional data is non-trivial. We show how to construct a space-efficient search index based on the latent space representation of a QVAE. Our experiments show a correlation between the Hamming distance in the embedded space and the Euclidean distance in the original space on the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) dataset. Further, we find real-world speedups compared to linear search and demonstrate memory-efficient scaling to half a billion data points

Visión de los ganaderos sobre las estrategias de manejo de las explotaciones de ovino para adaptarse al cambio climático en el Mediterráneo

Existen cinco estrategias principales de adaptación al CC de las explotaciones de ovino en el Mediterráneo, cuya importancia relativa varía entre países y sistemas de producción. Aunque algunos factores técnicos (como la presencia de riego) pueden determinar la estrategia idónea, otros aspectos relacionados con la percepción del riesgo por parte de los ganaderos también influyen en su visión sobre las mejores estrategias para adaptarse al CC.Financiación PRIMA-AEI (Proyecto ADAPT-HERD, PCI2019-103533) y Gobierno de Aragón (Grupo de investigación A14_20R

Farmer views of best climate change adaptation strategies for sheep farming in the Mediterranean

International audienceClimate Change (CC) impacts on agriculture will exacerbate in the next decades by a decrease of rainfall and increase of temperatures and extreme events. Pasture-based sheep farming systems in the Mediterranean basin are particularlyvulnerable as they depend on local feed resources, which are directly damaged by CC. Research has been on livestock adaptation strategies, usually follows top-down approaches not accounting for the experiential knowledge of farmers, limiting its applicability at farm level. This work aimed to analyse farmers views about CC impact and the effect of periodic events of food shortage (FS) and heat stress (HS) on animal and farm performance, to determine the usualpractices deployed to overcome these periodic events and the best herd and farm management strategies to adapt to CC. Data were collected through face-to-face surveys to 228 farmers in Egypt (n=47), France (34), Spain (45) andTunisia (101), covering representative sheep farming systems in 5 different Köppen climatic regions. CC scenarios were developed for each region based on the IPCC projections. All farmers recognize that CC is real, however, mostthink that it is a natural and human-induced process or even just a natural process (Egypt). Perceived risk is lower in the most extreme arid and semi-arid regions and in irrigated farms. Anyhow FS and HS are generally perceived asincreasingly important problems. Farms traditionally overcome periodic FS events mainly providing animals with food stuff produced on farm and kept for shortage periods, increasing purchased feed and/or modifying grazing schedules.90, 75 and 50% of French, Tunisian, Spanish farmers respectively reported recent farm changes to adapt to CC. Modification of grazing, lambing and sowing periods (France and Spain), breed substitutions (Tunisia), improvementsin farm buildings (all) were reported. Farmers identified three potential strategies named feed maximization, feed supplementation and herd downsizing, which feasibility varies across systems, countries and climatic regions