"Silage and microbial performance, old story but new problems."

• Published in: JARQ. Japan agricultural research quarterly Vol. 36; no. 2
• Main Authors: "Ohmomo, S. (Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences, Tsukuba, Ibaraki), Tanaka, O, Kitamoto, H, Cai, Y.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2002
• Subjects: ANIMAL FEEDING; DETERIORATION; HISTORY; LACTIC ACID BACTERIA; MICROBIAL ECOLOGY; QUALITY CONTROLS; SILAGE; SILAGE MAKING
• ISSN: 0021-3551
• DOI: 10.6090/jarq.36.59

"It is generally recognized that inoculants (lactic acid bacteria: LAB) can be used as silage additives to improve the fermentation quality and to enhance animal performance. Especially in Japan, silage-making is a major technique to produce stored feeds and the amount of silage produced in recent years has accounted for about 70% ofthe amount of roughages produced in farms. Nevertheless in the Japanese environment, commercial inoculants are not always suitable for silage-making. in the present paper, at first, basic aspects of silage-inaking will be described in Sections 1, 2 and 3, and the problems associated with siiage-making for cattle in Japan will be indicated in Sections 4 and 5. For the screen-ing of LAB strains to develop inoculants suitable for silage-making in Japan, the construction of a model system for silage fermentation invoiving a solid mixed culture consisting of LAB, clostridia and collfcum bactelra leferred to as ""pouch method wlll be presented In Sectron 6, and the results of screening of LAB by using the pouch method in Japan and In Thailand will be introduced in Section 7. In Section 8, attempts to improve LAB strains isolated through screening by tlle cell fusion method and electroporation method will be discussed. Finally, aerobic spoilage of silage which is another major problem wiil be outlined in Section 9."