Nowadays, piglet mortality, morbidity and overall robustness during the pre- and post-weaning periods are still a big issue for the swine industry causing economical and ethical concerns for farmers and consumers. Several reasons have been identified as the bases for the low robustness of young piglets, including the deficient development of the digestive and the immune systems; the use of new hyper prolific sows lines, which increase competition for suckling milk, especially for low body weight pigs; and the new management practices to improve sows' welfare. Nowadays, improving piglets' health status in early life by means of nutrition and feeding strategies is of utmost importance for the reduction in the use of antibiotics and pharmacological levels of ZnO which use is linked to antimicrobial resistance issue.

Nutritional and feeding strategies for sows, both during the gestation and the lactation periods, and for young piglets may reduce piglets' morbidity and mortality during the lactation and post-weaning periods. Moreover, there is still a lack of comprehensive studies investigating the mechanisms behind these nutritional and feeding strategies.

For this purpose, the gut digestive functionality, morphology, microbial ecosystem and the overall metabolism of young piglets in response to these nutritional strategies should be investigated. Furthermore, to elucidate the maternal effects on the offspring more attention should be directed to the composition of colostrum and milk and sows’ microbiota. Several new omics techniques are now available to investigate these aspects.

Overall, the main goal of this Research Topic is to elucidate the mode of action by which the different nutritional and feeding strategies for sows and piglets may have on the maturation and functionality of the gut, immune system and metabolism of young piglets, which are the bases of reducing piglets morbidity and mortality.

The aim of the current Research Topic is to evidence new feeding and nutritional strategies for sows and young piglets aimed to promote gut and immune system maturation of piglets.

The main areas to be included in this Research Topic, but not exclusively limited to, are:

- Feeding and nutritional strategies for the modulation of colostrum and milk composition

- Feeding and nutritional strategies for the modulation of sows and piglets microbiota

- Feeding and nutritional strategies for reducing mortality and morbidity of piglets in early life

- Feeding and nutritional strategies for improving gut health of piglets in early life

- Feeding and nutritional strategies for gut and immune system development of piglets in early life

- Mechanism of action of feeding and nutritional strategies in sows and piglets for improvement of robustness of piglets in early life

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Frontiers in Veterinary Science

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