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As one of the most important components, starch has made great contributions to feed but was wasted numerously during pig feeding. This paper is designed to explore the optimal ratio of dietary amylose to amylopectin for gut health and absorption, thereby improving starch utilization. Our results indicated that the dietary amylose/amylopectin ratio (AAR) of 0.60 could reduce feed conversion rate of piglets, having a certain positive significance for saving feed. In addition, under lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stress, a diet with an AAR of 0.40 to 0.60 significantly improved the intestinal health of piglets, which would provide data to support for the formulation of feed in weaned piglets during bacterial infection.

This study investigated the effects of diet with different amylose–amylopectin ratios (AAR) on the growth performance, intestinal morphology, digestive enzyme activities and mRNA expression of nutrients transporters in piglets with short-term lipopolysaccharide (LPS) intraperitoneal injections. Sixty 21 days-old piglets (Landrace × Yorkshire; 6.504 ± 0.079) were randomly assigned based on their body weight (BW) and litters of origins to five groups with experimental diets with an AAR of 0.00, 0.20, 0.40, 0.60, or 0.80 (namely, the 0.00, 0.20, 0.40, and 0.80 groups), respectively. Each treatment included 12 piglets (one piglet per pen). This experiment lasted for 28 days. On the 28th day, six piglets in each treatment were randomly selected for an LPS intraperitoneal injection (100 μg/kg BW), and other piglets were injected with normal saline. Twelve hours after LPS injection, all piglets were …