A faculty member in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences will use new federal grant funding to determine if the medicinal plant Moringa oleifera can relieve heat stress in pregnant and nursing pigs.

Radiah C. Minor, Ph.D., an associate professor of immunology in the Department of Animal Sciences, recently received a two-year, $300,000 grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture through its Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI). NIFA is a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Pork is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States, and North Carolina is one of the nation’s largest pork producers. A growing threat to the industry is heat stress, which can have negative effects on the health and performance of pigs. High temperatures can compound problems for gestating and lactating sows, particularly because they eat less food. This is something that can have dire consequences for piglets - and future generations of swine.

In her new project, Minor will work with collaborators at Purdue University to examine the effects of a specially designed cooling pad on heat-stressed sows that are eating feed mixed with a dried powder made from Moringa oleifera leaves.

“Animals that are heat-stressed eat less, but moringa is packed with proteins and vitamins and minerals. If the sows eat feed that’s supplemented with moringa, maybe they’ll get enough nutrients and bioactive components to help alleviate the negative aspects of the heat stress so they can make enough milk. It might even enhance the quality of milk,” Minor said.

Most of this fast-growing flowering tree is edible. Moringa is a good source of many vitamins and minerals, proteins, fatty acids and bioactive compounds. Minor said prior studies have shown that moringa has antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, and anti-bacterial properties. It also promotes lactation in cows, goats and humans.

Minor said her project could have implications far beyond the pork industry because neonatal pigs are often used as models for human lactation and development of infant formula. If moringa leads to the production of more and better milk in sows, Minor plans to see how the plant affects the immune components in milk — things like immunoglobulins, antibacterial proteins and cytokines, the signaling proteins that can activate immune responses in newborns.

“I feel we also have the potential here for impacting human lactation and understanding how moringa might benefit all mammals,” Minor said.

Robert E. Holland, Ph.D., the interim chair of the college’s Animal Sciences department, praised Minor’s work.

“As a previous administrator with NIFA, I understand the highly competitive nature of obtaining an AFRI grant,” Holland said. “This award speaks very highly of Dr. Minor’s skills in presenting a competitive grant, her expertise as a researcher and the importance of her research on an important topic for the state of North Carolina and the national pork industry.”

Minor, who joined the CAES faculty in 2008, has focused much of her recent work on Moringa oleifera, a tree native to India that now grows in tropical regions all over the world.

“I’m working on becoming a contributor to a certain space,” Minor said. “I feel like moringa is the supplement that I would like to make a contribution in.”