Feed-a-Gene 2nd annual meeting 2017
The 2nd annual meeting of the Feed-a-Gene project took place on 26-27 April 2017 in Lleida, Spain. It was hosted by Universitat de Lleida, a member of the Feed-a-Gene consortium, and attended by 72 participants. Attendees appreciated the excellent organization of the meeting by Dr. Jesús Pomar and his team. Feed-a-Gene project coordinator Jaap van Milgen (INRA) and project manager Vincent Troillard (INRA Transfert) would like to thank all people of Universitat de Lleida who made this meeting possible and enjoyable. The Vice-rector for Scientific and Technological Policy at Universitat de Lleida, Albert Sorribas Tello, extended a warm welcome to the meeting participants.
The 2-day meeting was the occasion for Feed-a-Gene partners to communicate on the progress made so far and to discuss about the state of advancement and future of the project. A full report of the meeting, including summaries of the research done in 2016-2017, will be released soon in the 2nd annual newsletter.
Feed-a-Gene meets Saphir
Marie-Hélène Pinard-van der Laan presented Saphir, a H2020 project that aims at strengthening animal production and health through the immune response. Many questions and results from Saphir are related to Feed-a-Gene’s own topics and possible synergies between the two projects were discussed after the presentation. Jaap van Milgen pointed out the importance of linking Feed-a-Gene with other European projects and of developing networks for researchers.
A year of results
Researchers presented 12 communications, showing the progress done in all work packages since the last meeting in April 2016 (Foulum, Denmark). The report on communication and dissemination activities showed a notable increase in the creation of dissemination materials (communications, peer-reviewed articles, book chapters etc..), with more than 40 communications and papers submitted or already available.
Lightweight data management: the SEEK platform
While project-wide data management is not required by the grant agreement, it remains an important issue for large research projects such as Feed-a-Gene. Following last year’s presentation of the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Resuable) concept by Richard Finkers (WUR), François Moreews (INRA) presented the SEEK platform, a lightweight implementation of the ISA (Investigation, Study, Assay) framework for managing life science, environmental and biomedical experiments.
Demonstration of the precision feeding system
A demonstration of the precision feeder system for pigs developed jointly by the Universitat de Lleida and Exafan (WP 4) was organized at the Department of Agroforestry Engineering (Universitat de Lleida). The demonstration showed the intelligent feeders, the controlling modules, the sensors and the Decision Support System. Click on the video below to watch an interview of Jesús Haro (Exafan) explaining the use of the precision feeders.
Action plans for 2017-2018 and recommendations by the Stakeholder advisory board (SAB)
The last day started with workshops dedicated to the discussion and preparation of activities for the next 12 months within and between work packages.
In the afternoon, WP leaders presented the 2017-2018 roadmap for their work packages. The SAB members actively participated to all sessions and provided much appreciated feedback at the end of the meeting.