AFBI students present cutting edge of research

Date published: 17 June 2015

The annual Agri-Food and Bioscience Institute (AFBI) post-graduate symposium was held recently at AFBI Hillsborough, with over 70 participants.

The annual Agri-Food and Bioscience Institute (AFBI) post-graduate symposium was held recently at AFBI Hillsborough, with over 70 participants, including full and part-time students and their supervisors.  This very successful event was organised primarily by the students themselves, under the chairmanship of Rory Lunny, and allowed everyone to meet collectively to share their research and experiences of post-graduate life.
 
AFBI has over 60 post-graduate students carrying out research across the full range of scientific disciplines.   In his opening remarks Professor Seamus Kennedy, the CEO of AFBI emphasised that postgraduate students are the life blood of any research organisation.  This was developed by Mr Tony O’Neill, Group Deputy Chief Executive, Dunbia who stressed the importance of high-quality research in maintaining N. Ireland’s competitiveness in international agri-food markets.  An important theme of his talk was the importance of research students to understand the practical significance and applications of what they were doing.

Twelve students gave oral presentations on topics ranging from tree health, agro-forestry and the distribution of harbour porpoise around the Northern Ireland coast to animal health, predictions of methane emissions from lowland lambs and the nutritional attributes of cows’ milk.  The prize for the best oral presentation was made to Mary Harty for a talk entitled “Effects of fertiliser form on yield, uptake and direct and indirect nitrous oxide (N20) emissions from grassland.”  Mary is a Walsh Fellowship student currently working in the Teagasc Environmental Research Centre in Johnstown Castle.  Mary was particularly commended for the important practical applications of her work.

Eleven first-year post-graduate students also presented posters describing their work.  Again these covered a wide range of topics including housing systems for beef cattle, factors improving sow performance, the impact of EU milk quotas and strategies to increase white clover use in grazed swards.  The prize for the best-presented poster was made to Claire Guy for her poster entitled “Grass growth, structure and morphology of tetraploid and diploid swards sown with and without white clover during the winter.”  Claire is a Walsh Fellowship student working in Teagasc, Moorepark.
  
Dr Sinclair Mayne, Director of the AFBI’s Sustainable Agri-Food Sciences Division, was a member of the judging panel and said “The standard of the presentations was outstanding and the work described by the young scientist highly relevant and significant to the ongoing importance of the N. Ireland agri-food industry. I wish them every success in their future research careers.”