Animal health projects launched by Queen’s University Belfast and the Agri-Food Biosciences Institute (AFBI) have been selected for funding by the UK government.
The Queen’s-AFBI Strategic Alliance has said it is celebrating after two of its proposals secured funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
The successful projects will join 12 other research projects shortlisted from around the UK in phase two of the UK government’s Endemic and Livestock Disease Initiative. The second phase unlocks £9 million of funding.
In Northern Ireland, the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) is involved in co-funding the initiative alongside the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Scottish government with a total of over £1.7 million allocated for the two Queen’s-AFBI projects.
One project will focus on endemic infections in ruminant livestock, while the other will be concerned with commercially farmed chicken health and welfare.
The agri-food and animal-health industries, farmers, vets, diagnostic laboratories and policymakers will also be involved in the research, the university and AFBI said.
Research
Queen’s University and AFBI said that their projects seek to drive a more sustainable agri-food sector by pooling expertise, resources and research capability in Northern Ireland.
The UK government’s campaign is aimed at improving farm productivity as well as health and welfare of UK herds by reducing the burden of endemic disease, while also seeking to minimise the environmental impact of the livestock sector.
One of the alliance’s projects, the Co-Adapt project, will be led by Prof. Eric Morgan and Prof. Ilias Kyriazakis of the Institute for Global Food Security and School of Biological Sciences at Queen’s University.
It seeks to better understand and manage co-infections in livestock, focusing on gastrointestinal disease in sheep and cattle.
Prof. Morgan said the Co-Adapt project will “determine how altered timing of infections as a result of climate warming is giving rise to new parasite and pathogen combinations and develop methods to manage them successfully in an era of increasing drug resistance”.
The second project, Runting Stunting Syndrome in Broilers, will be led by Dr. Victoria Smyth from AFBI to investigate stunting in broiler flocks – a condition with a “significant impact” on the poultry industry, the alliance said.
“I am delighted to lead this important project, which will see AFBI and Queen’s researchers using novel, ground-breaking methods and technologies supported by established scientific expertise to study this condition which is responsible for substantial welfare and economic consequences in broiler flocks in the UK,” Smyth said.
The 14 successful projects come from all over the UK and include research focus on beef and dairy cattle, poultry, sheep and pigs. Investment for the projects is variously distributed by BBSRC, Defra, DAERA and the Scottish government.
