Germ-free growing rats were fed on a glucosinolate-rich diet (rapeseed-meal-based) and compared with counterparts fed on a glucosinolate-free diet (soya-bean-meal-based), both diets being isonitrogenous and isoenergetic. For each diet half the animals received phenobarbital in drinking water as an inducer of xenobiotic-metabolizing enzymes. Some of the usual deleterious glucosinolate-linked effects, i.e. kidney hypertrophy and reduction in growth and feed intake, were followed and three of the major hepatic xenobiotic-metabolizing enzymes were investigated. Growth rate, dietary intake and kidney weight were not altered by glucosinolates in the absence of intestinal microflora, whether the animals were treated with phenobarbital or not. As far as the hepatic xenobiotic-metabolizing enzymes are concerned, the specific level of cytochrome P450 and the specific activities of glutathione-S-transferase (EC 2.5.1.18) and UDPglucuronosyltransferase (EC 2.4.1.17) remained unchanged in rats receiving the glucosinolate-rich diet compared with the control animals. Despite the low dose given, phenobarbital displayed its usual inducing effect on all three enzymes, similar whatever the diet. A previous counterpart experiment performed with conventional animals had shown that glucosinolate feeding led to large alterations of the variables herein studied, some of these modifications being hugely enhanced by a phenobarbital treatment. Therefore, the present results obtained on germ-free animals prove that alterations of the xenobiotic-metabolizing enzymes induced by glucosinolates are somehow mediated by the intestinal microflora. Furthermore, the involvement of those enzymes in glucosinolate toxicity definitely requires the presence of the intestinal microflora.

Cotyledons and hulls were prepared from twelve varieties of field beans (Vicia faba L.). Adult cockerels were tube-fed either beans, cotyledons or hull diets containing high or low levels of protein. Metabolizable energy coefficients and starch digestibility coefficients were determined for beans, cotyledons and hull diets. Lipid digestibility coefficients from hull diets were also determined. When cotyledons were fed there were no significant differences in the way in which adult cockerels metabolized energy or digested starch from the proanthocyanidin-free and proanthocyanidin-rich varieties (0·780, 0·908, 0·775 and 0·918 respectively). When beans were fed, however, both energy metabolizability and starch digestibility decreased due to the presence of hulls, with proanthocyanidin-rich hulls decreasing values the most to 0·660 and 0·819 respectively, and proanthocyanidin-free hulls decreasing values to a lesser extent to 0·709 and 0·886 respectively. Diets composed of proanthocyanidin-rich hulls depressed metabolizable energy and maize starch digestibility. Their effect on maize starch digestibility, however, was considerably less than that on bean starch. Lipid digestibility was enhanced by proanthocyanidins but only when the protein content of the diet was high. There was a significant correlation (P < 0·05) between the vanillin and anthocyanidin formation methods for the estimation of proanthocyanidins (r 0·779). There was also a highly significant regression of bean starch digestibility v. proanthocyanidin content of coloured-flowered bean hulls (P < 0·001). The regression of maize starch digestibility v. hull proanthocyanidins was also significant at P < 0·005.

Deterministic mathematical equations are derived to describe the pattern of marker excretion in the faeces of ruminants under steady-state conditions when diffusion and viscosity concepts are introduced into a simple two-compartment scheme of the gastrointestinal tract. The basic scheme comprises a pure-mixing pool obeying first-order kinetics and a second compartment exhibiting streamline flow. Introduction of a velocity gradient, longitudinal diffusion or both into the second compartment, even with various simplifying assumptions, yields analytically insoluble equations. The impact of these mechanisms is to be investigated numerically rather than analytically in future work.