The Food, Nutrition and Agriculture Genomics Congress is part of the highly successful Oxford Global NGS Series. Q&A session with three of the top speakers of the Congress.

Q&A session with Denis Murphy - University of South Wales, Bertram Benig - University of Göttingen and Roland Koedijk from Cargill Animal Nutrition.

Among many topics, they discuss Digital PCR and Advances in qPCR in Food, Nutrition and Agriculture as well as Plant and Animal Genomics Research.

Denis Murphy highlights the use of bioinformatics and genomics technologies when asked "How can we use bioinformatics and genomic technologies to improve the yield and quality of crops and their products?"

"Over the past decade the cost of DNA sequencing has been reduced by more than 10,000 fold. This has enabled us to sequence the genomes of virtually all of the major crops and many related species. As a consequence we are now confronted with a plethora of data that in many cases has yet to be fully analysed and converted into truly useful information and knowledge in terms of manipulating important traits in crops [...]"

You can read more of Denis Murphy's Q&A here.

Bertram Benig outlines the potential of using droplet digital PCR as one of the technologies in Food Genomics. When asked about the use of droplet digital PCR to identify and quantify species in meat and meat products, he points out:

"Species fraud and product mislabelling in processed food, albeit not being a direct health issue, often results in consumer distrust. Therefore methods for quantification of undeclared species are needed. Targeting mitochondrial DNA is unsuitable, due to a five-fold inter- tissue variation in mtDNA content per cell resulting in either an under-or overestimation of species DNA contents. [...]"

You can read more of Bertram Benig's Q&A here.

Roland Koedijk points out the link between diet and gene expression responses in production animals and discusses the challenges and opportunities using poultry technology:

 "Many challenges exist in the poultry sector. Improving feeding efficiency will be an important challenge, even though poultry is one of the more efficient animals in converting feed into meat. It is expected for the near future that genetic improvements will likely focus at feed conversion improvements rather than increased growth rate. In production and management there are still large challenges to fight bacterial infections such as E-coli, Salmonella and Campylobacter. These are then mainly related to food safety."

You can also have a look at the complete Roland Koedijk's Q&A here.

Event Highlights:

The congress will also feature the following topics and speakers:

  • Nina Bailey: Nutrition Scientist, Head of Clinical Nutrition, Igennus Healthcare Nutrition UK
  • Adam Baker: Head of HND Discovery, Chr. Hansen A/S, Denmark
  • Paul Cotter: Principal Research Officer, Teagasc, Ireland
  • Tamas Dalmay: Head of School, Professor of RNA Biology School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia
  • Muriel Derrien: Research Scientist - Gut Microbiota and Probiotic Platform, Danone

For the full list of speakers: FNA Congress 2015 Speakers

You can also download a conference brochure: FNA 2015 Agenda

Book your place today

For further details please contact Stephanie Punfield. Marketing Executive. +44(0) 1865 248455. S.punfield@oxfordglobal.co.uk