Functional Nutrigenomics Approaches for Heat Stress Management in Poultry

Heat stress (HS) represents one of the most significant environmental challenges compromising the sustainability of worldwide poultry production by impairing growth performance, inducing oxidative stress, disrupting immune function, and undermining gut health. Conventional nutritional strategies have shown limited effectiveness in providing sustained thermotolerance, highlighting the pressing necessity for innovative and biologically viable approaches to HS mitigation. Recent advances in omics technologies and precision livestock farming have created new opportunities for the development of predictive and resilience-focused livestock systems. Multi-omics methodologies, including transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and epigenomics, have considerably advanced our understanding of the intricate regulatory mechanisms that control thermotolerance via the modulation of redox homeostasis, immune responses, metabolic adaptation, and gut health. In this context, functional nutrients, such as amino acids, vitamins, trace minerals, and phytogenic compounds, have emerged as potent nutrigenomic regulators capable of modulating stress-responsive molecular networks to enhance physiological resilience under HS. This review provides an overview of the molecular mechanisms underlying nutrient–gene interactions during HS and highlighting the potential of nutrigenomic approaches to enhance thermotolerance and physiological resilience in poultry.