Department of Nutrition and Nutritional Physiology

Last modified: 24. October 2022

The research sites of the Department located in Keszthely and Herceghalom have their own animal facilities, a feedmill and an analytical laboratory equipped by state-of-the-art large instruments. The animal experimentation condition system available at the Department makes it possible to perform production tests as well as digestibility and metabolic studies in poultry species and swine. In the latter field, we are conducting digestibility and rumen degradation model studies also in sheep. The own feedmill makes it possible to mix small amounts of additives to the diets and to granulate small feed batches. The feed analysis laboratories of the Department offer a possibility for determining the most important nutritive, antinutritive and toxic compounds in feeds. In addition to the traditional large instruments (HPLC, GC-MS, AAS) the Department has an automatic amino acid analyser, a bomb calorimeter and a special viscosity meter suitable for measuring the viscosity of intestinal content.

Besides the classical animal physiology and nutrition disciplines, we play an important role in the equine trainings in Keszthely, in the teaching of nutrition science. The Department routinely performs product qualifications (meat, milk, eggs) related to different nutritional treatments.

Research fields of the Department:

• Development of the feeding technology of farm animal species
• Improvement of the efficiency of protein nutrition
• Agro-environmental research related to animal production and nutrition
• Exploration of certain aspects of animal nutrition and animal health
• Development and practical adaptation of precision nutrition technologies
• Study of the animal welfare and sustainability aspects of animal nutrition and animal production
• Research of interactions between animal nutrition and the intestinal microbiota.