ABSTRACT

Background:The South American guinea pig, a rodent species, has been domesticated and is considered suitable for human food in various parts of the world. In Ecuador, Cavia porcellus, which was initially domesticated by indigenous populations, is frequently utilised for ensuring food security due to its meat's resemblance to that of rabbit or chicken. Furthermore, small-scale farmers in Ecuador utilise indigenous food resources as supplements due to their capacity to offer bioactive components that yield several advantages for organic reactions. The primary application of Curcuma longa (C.longa) meal is as a feed supplement for Cavia porcellus. Nevertheless, certain investigations have also documented productive, metabolic, or immunological responses. Hence, the objective of this study was to assess the impact of dietary supplementation with C. longa on guinea pigs. Methodology: In this study, a completely randomised design was used to assign 220 mice to four treatments: "Control", "T1", "T2", and "T3". The assignment of animals to treatments was done randomly. The initial treatment, referred to as "Control", consisted of a meal comprising 60% concentrate feed. The second treatment, T1, consisted of 0.60% C. longa, T2 consisted of 1.30% C. longa, and T3 consisted of 2.30% C. longa. Results:Based on our findings, the amount of feed consumed did not vary amongst the different treatments over the course of the experiment (125 ± 13 g/day, p = 0.32). Nevertheless, the inclusion of 1.30% of C. longa (T2) led to a significant increase in the final body weight (p < 0.001), while T3 exhibited a higher feed conversion ratio (p < 0.001). Therefore, an observation was made about the likelihood of carcass surrender, with a measured tendency (p = 0.08). The T2 group had a greater percentage (77%) compared to the T1 group (72%; p = 0.03) and the T3 group (73%; p = 0.04). Furthermore, the difference was even more significant when compared to the Control treatment group (63%; p = 0.001). Regarding expansion, the serum lipid concentration was significantly lower in the T2 therapy compared to T1, T3, and the Control group (p = 0.001 to 0.023). Conclusions:Thus, including C. longa as a nutritional supplement in animal production appears to be a beneficial alternative to antibiotics, also reducing the production of high carbon footprint products. Similarly, we determined that the inclusion of C. longa flour at a concentration of 1.30% as a dietary supplement effectively regulates the levels of lipids in the blood serum of Guinea pigs. These promising results allow for a comprehensive and advanced range of support studies at immunological levels to validate the bioactive characteristics of C. longa.