Agricultural Biotechnology Research Institute of Iran

Designing and commercialization of specific native probiotics for poultry

Iran ranks ninth in the world and third in Asia with an annual production of more than 4.2 million tons of poultry meat. The country's poultry industry is facing many problems such as the presence of various diseases and the use of antibiotics to deal with diseases, high fat content, high feed conversion rate (FCR) and low carcass yield. Probiotic bacteria with a global market equivalent to 4 billion dollars in the livestock, poultry and aquatic industries are very important in reducing the consumption of antibiotics, increasing the health, immunity, yield and performance as well as quality indicators of poultry. In order to achieve poultry probiotic formulations, a research program was designed and implemented with the aim of isolation, identification, evaluation and production of native lactic acid bacteria with exclusive probiotic capability for the poultry industry at the Agricultural Biotechnology Research Institute. In this regard, lactic acid bacteria were isolated from the digestive system of indigenous birds in different regions of the country, biochemically evaluated and molecularly identified. In the next step, the probiotic potentials of the selected strains were evaluated at lab and farm conditions on broiler chickens and quails at the pilot level. Finally, the technical know-how and the selected strains were transferred to the Nature Biotechnology Company through the technology transfer agreement. Fortunately, during the last 4 years, the process of commercialization of the mentioned technical know-how has been completed in the company and various probiotic products have been registered and produced. According to the company's report, by using the achievements of the current project and also the company's own probiotic strains, about 1000 tons of different probiotics formulations specific for livestock, poultry and aquatic have been produced annually. The economic value of the annual production of these probiotics is more than 2 million USD and their annual effectiveness through increasing the growth and performance of livestock and poultry, reducing feed consumption and improving the conversion rate is at least 40 million USD.