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Dr. Huaijun Zhou has been awarded the 2023 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Prize  in Food and Agriculture Science http://www.nasonline.org/programs/awards/2023-awards/Zhou.html

The Genomics to improve poultry team held four days annual meeting at the Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Morogoro, Tanzania, and hosted by our partners, Dr. Amandus Muhairwa and Dr. Peter Msoffe. The event brought together scientists from the University of Ghana (UoG), Iowa State University (ISU), and the University of California – Davis (UCD). The GIP annual meeting offered an essential opportunity to reinforce the relationship between team members and students to highlight the achievements over the past year and discuss the future directions of the program.

Three workshops were organized at the Sokoine University of Agriculture in NDV prevention and control, emphasizing NDV vaccination, Biosecurity measures, and outbreaks investigation and response. The workshop provided training to a core group of trainers from the UoG and SUA who will deliver the training workshops to agriculture and veterinary extension agents in May 2023.

The Genomics to Improve Poultry Innovation Lab (GIP-IL) was invited to Feed the Future Innovation Labs Director’s Meeting 2022. The Director of the GIP program, Dr. Zhou, presented the major activity for this past year the program’s progress of applying advanced genetics and genomics technologies to enhance innate resistance to Newcastle Disease (ND) in indigenous chickens.

GIP Program Director Dr. Huaijun Zhou was invited to present the visions and impacts of the GIP program at the World’s Poultry Congress Conference in Paris https://wpcparis2022.com/

The Director shared the objectives and achievements of the GIP program to enhance resilience to Newcastle Disease and Heat Stress to support poultry farmers, and endorse The Feed Future mission to improve food security and Nutrition in Africa.

The meeting started with a brief reminder of the program's overall goal and objectives of phase II (2018-2023): the capacity strengthening plan and the program's discovery, development, and implementation phases presented by the GIP director Dr. Huaijun Zhou. The presentation included an overview of the program’s mission and objectives to improve resistance to Newcastle disease to increase productivity in local African chickens, highlighting the program achievements and the plans for next year.

Engaging communities through outreach activities has been a critical component of the GIP-IL to increase smallholder poultry producers and breeders’ access to Newcastle disease virus (NDV) prevention and control measures. To enhance the awareness of NDV in Africa, the GIP team developed an outreach video through a partnership with Scientific Animations Without Borders (SAWBO).

The GIP program annual meeting event was held this year on the week of October 11, 2021. The online event brought together partners from the Sokoine University of Agriculture, the University of Ghana, the International Livestock Research Institute, Iowa State University, and the University of California Davis. The principal investigators and scientists from each institute in Africa and USA presented the highlights of their recent activities and work plans for the upcoming year.

Dr. Dekkers is responsible for the quantitative genetic and genome-wide association analyses for the GIP program to select the specific SNPs to develop the low-density SNP panel. Dr. Dekkers also led teaching and research activities in animal breeding and genomics at Iowa State University. He established an outstanding reputation as an international research leader in molecular and quantitative genetics.

The USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service and Purdue University’s Office of International Programs in Agriculture hold global food system innovation Forum. Dr. Lamont, Distinguished Professor, Iowa State University and the Genomics to Improve Poultry partner, spoke on “the genetic innovations in poultry.” She discussed the important role of poultry in global food security and how genomics can be used to help develop healthy, productive, and climate‐resilient poultry.

The annual Research Advisory Committee meeting was held virtually this year. The meeting started with an outline of the overall goals and specific objectives of phase II (2018-2023) of the program: the capacity strengthening plan and the discovery, development, and implementation phases of the program presented by Dr. Huaijun Zhou the director of Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Genomics to Improve Poultry.

This year, the GIP program endorsed the virtual platform to hold the annual meeting for the week of October 06, 2020. The online event brought together partners from Sokoine University of Agriculture, the University of Ghana, International Livestock Research Institute, Iowa State University, and the University of California Davis. We were honored to be joined by Dr. Tyrell Kahan, Livestock Research Advisor at Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, USAID.

Dr. Sue Lamont was acknowledged by the Iowa Poultry Association with the Honorary Member Award as a distinguished professor that made significant contributions to the poultry community in Iowa. The Genomics to Improve Poultry team congratulates Dr. Lamont for her outstanding performances.

https://ipa.memberclicks.net/assets/Media/IPA%20Honorary%20Member%20FF%…

Congratulations to Dr. Huaijun Zhou on receiving the UC Davis Chancellor’s Award for International Engagement.  Dr. Zhou was recognized for his outstanding innovative global engagement by carrying out cutting-edge research trough international collaboration with aboard institutions, and commitment to globally educating the next generation of scientists.

Emily Aston, Ph.D., DVM and postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Zhou’s lab, led a training at the University of Ghana (UoG) introducing the Oxford Nanopore MinION sequencing technology to characterize Newcastle disease virus (NDV) circulating in poultry. This real-time sequencing technology will help researchers at UoG to comprehend the phylogenetics diversity of the NDV virus strains circulating locally in Ghana and eventually enrich the available NDV genomics database.