Table 3. Effect of dietary plant-based flavonoid blend on apparent nutrient digestibility and cecal microbial population of broilers.

Variables	Flavonoid blend (FB)1/kg diet					p-value2
	0	0.2	0.4	0.6		Overall	L	Q	C
Apparent nutrient digestibility (%)
DM	89.45c ± 0.13	90.01b ± 0.19	90.11b ± 0.10	91.75a ± 0.09		<0.01	<0.01	<0.01	<0.01
CP	65.62c ± 1.28	63.78d ± 0.48	67.07b ± 0.02	73.52a ± 0.28		<0.01	<0.01	<0.01	<0.01
EE	77.15c ± 1.33	79.60c ± 0.52	81.37b ± 0.62	83.25a ± 1.41		<0.01	<0.01	<0.01	<0.01
NFE	87.67c ± 0.46	85.84d ± 0.29	88.55b ± 0.20	90.43a ± 0.39		<0.01	<0.01	<0.01	<0.01
Cecal digesta
pH	7.36a ± 0.09	7.17a ± 0.28	6.60b ± 0.19	6.49b ± 0.19		<0.01	<0.01	0.76	0.14
Cecal microbial population (log10)
TVC	10.25a ± 0.11	9.87a ± 0.51	7.78c ± 0.46	8.73b ± 0.43		<0.01	<0.01	0.02	<0.01
TECC	6.99a ± 0.49	6.88a ± 0.60	3.84b ± 0.51	4.54b ± 0.63		<0.01	<0.01	0.24	<0.01
TSC	3.41a ± 0.05	3.18b ± 0.06	2.47c ± 0.04	2.54c ± 0.02		<0.01	<0.01	<0.01	<0.01
TScC	8.05a ± 0.47	6.79b ± 0.34	4.71c ± 0.55	4.58c ± 0.42		<0.01	<0.01	0.06	0.04
Lact. spp.	7.09b ± 0.54	9.61a ± 0.54	9.99a ± 0.53	9.66a ± 0.55		<0.01	<0.01	<0.01	0.30

CP: crude protein; EE: ether extract; NFE: nitrogen-free extract; TVC: total viable count; TECC: total E. coli count; TSC: total salmonella count; TScC: total staphylococcus count; Lact. spp.: Lactobacillus species. ¹0 FB: basal diet containing mainly corn-soya bean meal without flavonoid blend and having ME = 2982 kcal/kg & CP = 21.61% in the starter and ME = 3051 kcal/kg & CP = 20.65% in grower); 0.2 FB: 0.2-gm flavonoid blend/kg diet; 0.4 FB: 0.4-gm flavonoid blend/kg diet; 0.6 FB: 0.6-gm flavonoid blend/kg diet. ²L: linear; Q: quadratic; C: cubic; values of different variables indicate as mean ± standard deviation; ^abcdmean values with dissimilar superscripts differ significantly (p < 0.05).