Investigation of zeolites influence on vitamin B6 content in broilers' chicken meat: Method validation | Ispitivanje uticaja zeolita na sadržaj vitamina B6 u mesu brojlera - validacija metode

Zeolites are crystal, hydrated aluminosilicates of alkali-metal and alkaline-earth-metal cations which possesses infinite three-dimensional crystalline structure, and are characterized with an ability of losing and accepting water and interchanging some of their own constitutional cations. Zeolites are more and more used in veterinary and human medicine. As a dietary supplement, they have been present on the European market since 1998. Zeolite-based products are used to absorb aflatoxins and prevent aflatoxicosis, as well as appearance of aflatoxins residues in eggs, poultry meat, beef, mutton and pork. The aim of this paper was to determinate, using HPLC method with fluorescent detection, the content of vitamin B6 in meat of poultry fed with: commercial feed for broilers fattening; commercial feed for broilers fattening with the addition of 0.2% of zeolite i.e. to investigate whether the presence of zeolite in feed has any influence on resorption and total vitamin B6 content in poultry meat. For this purpose an experiment on 30 broiler chicken was set. During 6 weeks, control group was fed with commercial broiler chicken fattening mixture, while 0.2% of zeolite was added to the commercial mixtures of experimental group. After six weeks vitamin B6 content was determined by ion-pair reverse-phase HPLC method with fluorescent detector, after acid and enzymatic meat samples hydrolysis. Results showed that, after adding 0.2% of zeolite to chicken diet, there was no statistically significant difference in vitamin B6 content in meat of experimental group, compared with the control group of broiler chicken. Investigation of zeolite adsorption ability of vitamin B6 gave significant contribution to the studies of the possibilities of its application in poultry production from the aspect of obtaining meat that fulfills all hygienic and nutritional requirements.