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The present study was conducted to examine the comparative efficacy of potassium simplex optimization medium (KSOM) and North Carolina State University (NCSU)-23 medium supplemented with beta-mercaptoethanol (β-ME) and amino acids (AA) on the developmental competence of porcine in vitro fertilized (IVF) embryos. Four experiments were conducted. KSOM and NCSU-23 medium were used to culture porcine parthenogenetic (Exp. 1) and IVF (Exp. 2) embryos. KSOM and NCSU-23 were equally effective in supporting porcine parthenogenetic and IVF embryo development from the 1-cell stage to blastocysts. The NCSU-23 medium (Exp. 3) and KSOM (Exp. 4) were supplemented with amino acid (AA; 5 μl/ml non-essential amino acids + 10 μl/ml essential amino acids) and/or 10 μM beta-mercaptoethanol (β-ME). The quality of blastocysts from Exp. 3 and 4 was evaluated by counting the number of total cells and determining the ratio of the inner cell mass (ICM) to trophoectoderm (TE) cells. Supplementing with AA and β-ME or βME alone in NCSU-23 produced significant (p<0.05) differences in terms of rate of cleavage to the 2- to 4- cell (80.8 to 85.4% vs. 73.6%) and blastocyst (30.4 to 30.5 vs. 23.5%) stages and the number of TE (51.4 to 53.8 vs. 35.8) and total cells (67.2 to 71.2 to 48.8) over the control group. On the other hand, supplementing KSOM with AA and/or β-ME produced significant (p<0.05) differences in terms of rate of cleavage to the 2- to 4-cell (78.8% vs. 67.7%) and morula (57.8% vs. 46.3%) stages and the number of ICM (18.6 to 19.2 vs. 11.6) and total cells (62.8 to 70.6 vs. 42.8) over control group. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that both KSOM and NCSU-23 medium supplemented with AA and β-ME and/or only βME alone are superior to normal KSOM and NCSU-23 for porcine IVF embryo culture in terms of embryo developmental competence and quality.
