The research team, led by Jiawei Tan, Jiahui Yin, and senior author Hongqi Xie of Hunan Agricultural University, focused on an underutilized residue: the small inner scales of lily bulbs that are routinely stripped away during food processing. Because the core sits at the center of the bulb, it retains a concentrated payload of the bioactive compounds for which lilies are prized, including polysaccharides and steroidal saponins. Rather than cultivating dedicated crops of medicinal herbs, as most phytogenic feed additives require, the researchers tapped a waste stream, an approach that simultaneously reduces agricultural waste, lowers feed costs, and avoids land-use competition. The raw material was identified as Longya lily, Lilium brownii var. viridulum Baker, and supplied by a lily development company in Longhui County.

Producing the extract, designated BHX, followed a procedure adapted from traditional Chinese medicine processing standards. Dried lily core was ground to a fine powder, soaked in ultrapure water, and subjected to a double-cycle heat-reflux decoction at 100 degrees Celsius, with each cycle lasting one hour under magnetic stirring. The filtered, centrifuged supernatants were concentrated under reduced pressure and vacuum-dried into a brownish powder with an extraction yield of 18.5 percent. Spectrophotometric characterization revealed a chemically rich preparation: 33.22 percent total polysaccharides, 3.61 percent total saponins, 0.59 percent total polyphenols, and 0.27 percent total flavonoids. These compound classes are known for antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and prebiotic-like activities, making the extract a plausible candidate for modulating gut fermentation in poultry.

To test the hypothesis, the team randomly assigned 240 healthy one-day-old male yellow-feathered broilers to four dietary treatments: a basal control diet, or the same diet supplemented with 300, 600, or 900 milligrams per kilogram of BHX. Birds were housed in six replicate cages per treatment and followed for 53 days, spanning starter and grower phases formulated according to the Chinese Chicken Feeding Standard. Growth performance was assessed by measuring body weight, average daily gain, average daily feed intake, and the feed conversion ratio at days 1, 28, and 53. Mortality across the entire experiment remained below 1.5 percent, and organ indices for the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys, thymus, and bursa of Fabricius showed no significant differences, supporting the short-term tolerability of the supplement at all tested doses.

The growth results were striking, particularly during the starter phase. By day 28, body weight, average daily gain, and feed intake were all significantly higher in every BHX group compared with controls, while the feed conversion ratio dropped significantly at the 300 milligram per kilogram dose. By day 53, body weight in supplemented birds reached roughly 2,187 to 2,207 grams, compared with 2,075 grams in controls, and average daily gain over the full trial was significantly improved across all BHX groups. Crucially, the efficiency gains came without increased overall feed intake, meaning the extract improved the conversion of consumed feed into body gain rather than simply stimulating appetite. The 300 and 600 milligram per kilogram doses produced the most consistent improvements, an early hint that the response would prove non-linear.

Carcass measurements added another layer of benefit. Birds receiving 600 or 900 milligrams per kilogram of the extract showed significantly higher carcass yields and half-eviscerated yields than controls, indicating more efficient conversion of live weight into saleable carcass mass, although breast and leg muscle yields themselves were unchanged. Meat quality told an equally compelling story. Cooking loss in breast muscle fell significantly at the two higher doses, from 22.93 percent in controls to 17.71 and 18.87 percent, while leg-muscle cooking loss declined in a striking dose-dependent manner, from 23.05 percent in controls to just 15.25 percent at the highest dose. Leg-muscle drip loss also dropped significantly at the lowest dose, and postmortem pH values shifted favorably in both muscle types. Because postmortem pH governs the charge and spatial organization of myofibrillar proteins, these coordinated changes point to improved water-holding capacity, a trait that directly influences juiciness, yield, and consumer acceptance.

Searching for the mechanism, the researchers turned to the cecum, the primary site of microbial fermentation in birds. Gas chromatography analysis revealed that cecal butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid that fuels intestinal epithelial cells and regulates gut homeostasis, rose significantly at every BHX dose, climbing from 1.02 milligrams per gram in controls to 1.48 milligrams per gram at the highest supplementation level. Butyrate’s influence may extend beyond the gut: prior work has linked fermentation-derived signals to muscle oxidative status through Nrf2-related pathways, offering a plausible metabolic bridge between cecal fermentation and the improved water retention observed in the meat. The team also examined duodenal morphology and found that although villus height and crypt depth individually were unchanged, the villus-height-to-crypt-depth ratio, a standard indicator of intestinal functional architecture, was significantly higher at 300 and 600 milligrams per kilogram, suggesting a more favorable balance between absorptive and proliferative compartments of the gut lining.

Deep sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene in cecal contents revealed a subtle but meaningful microbial story. Overall alpha and beta diversity were not significantly altered, indicating that BHX did not broadly reconstruct the cecal ecosystem. Instead, it selectively redistributed bacterial niches: the genus Romboutsia and the taxon CHKCI002 were significantly enriched at the low dose, Alistipes peaked at the intermediate dose, and norank_f_Peptococcaceae was numerically most abundant at the high dose. Remarkably, butyrate increased at all doses despite these distinct genus-level profiles, a pattern the authors attribute to functional redundancy, whereby different bacterial communities deliver a similar fermentation output. In other words, BHX appears to regulate microbial function more consistently than taxonomic structure.

Correlation analyses wove these threads together. Mantel tests identified significant associations between overall microbiota composition and butyrate, isobutyrate, body weight, and breast-muscle cooking loss, while Spearman correlations linked specific genera, including Akkermansia and norank_f_Peptococcaceae, positively with butyrate, and Butyricicoccus and Romboutsia negatively with isobutyrate. The authors are careful to frame these relationships as hypothesis-generating rather than causal, and they acknowledge key limitations: the extract was characterized only at the class level by spectrophotometry, nutrient digestibility and intestinal nutrient transport were not directly measured, and only male birds were evaluated. Validation in female birds and under commercial production conditions remains a necessary next step, as does identification of the specific bioactive constituents driving the response.

Even with those caveats, the study’s implications are considerable. Poultry meat is projected to account for more than 45 percent of global meat consumption by 2026, and the search for antibiotic-free growth promoters has largely relied on cultivated herbs such as garlic and oregano, whose production competes with food systems and whose bioactive composition varies with geography. A standardized extract derived from a processing waste stream sidesteps both problems, offering a waste-to-value pathway that aligns economic and environmental incentives. The non-linear dose response, with 600 milligrams per kilogram delivering the most consistent overall benefits while 900 milligrams per kilogram raised butyrate without further growth gains, suggests a physiological ceiling worth mapping precisely. If subsequent trials confirm these results at commercial scale, the inner core of the lily bulb, once destined for disposal, could become a cornerstone ingredient in the post-antibiotic era of poultry farming, turning an overlooked residue into a genuine engine of sustainable animal agriculture.

Subject of Research: Effects of dietary lily bulb core extract supplementation on growth performance, meat quality, and intestinal health in yellow-feathered broilers

Article Title: Dietary Supplementation With Lily Bulb Core Extract Improves Feed Efficiency, Meat Quality, and Intestinal Health in Yellow‐Feathered Broilers

Article References: Tan, J., Yin, J., Fan, X., Zhang, L., Xia, C., Sun, S., Mi, X., Hu, Y., Zeng, J., Xiang, W., & Xie, H. (2026). Dietary Supplementation With Lily Bulb Core Extract Improves Feed Efficiency, Meat Quality, and Intestinal Health in Yellow‐Feathered Broilers. Food Science & Nutrition, 14(9), Article e72359. https://doi.org/10.1002/fsn3.72359

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1002/fsn3.72359

Keywords: lily bulb core extract, yellow-feathered broilers, phytogenic feed additives, antibiotic growth promoter alternatives, cecal butyrate, gut microbiota, meat quality, feed conversion ratio, intestinal morphology, short-chain fatty acids, poultry nutrition, waste-to-value