AG e-news February 10, 2017
News and events from the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, University of Manitoba.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Tuesday, February 14 – A Department of Entomology Seminar will be presented by Dr. Olivier Tremblay-Savard, Department of Computer Science, University of Manitoba, on “Algorithms for the analysis of RNA evolution”. Refreshments at 10:00 am, seminar begins at 10:10 am sharp in 220 Animal Science/Entomology Building.
Tuesday, February 14 – A Department of Animal Science Seminar will be held on in Room 219 Animal Science Building at 11:30 am. Bonjin Koo, M.Sc. student, will present “Feeding Strategies to reduce the dietary costs for nursery pigs without compromising growth performance and gut health”. Jule Dube-Smith, M.Sc. student, will present “Monitoring changes in microbial community composition in soil and rhizosphere of a commercial potato crop in Southern Manitoba after application of aerated compost tea”. All are welcome to attend.
Wednesday, February 15 – The Dr. Patrick Choy Distinguished Lectureship will be presented by Dr. Harlad zur Hausen at 12:00 pm in the Frederic Gaspard Theatre, Bannatyne Campus. His topic is “Infectious factors in bovine meat and dairy products and their possible role in human cancers and neurological diseases.”
Wednesday, February 15 – Two conference-length Soil Science Seminars will take place at 12:30 pm in Room 346 Ellis Building. Masoud Goharrokhi, Ph.D. student, will present “Assessing some of the issues associated with the time-integrated fine sediment sampler (TIFSS).” Mayowa Adelekun, Ph.D. student. “Simulation of greenhouse gas fluxes from perennial forage grasses and annual crops using the DNDC model.”
Wednesday, February 15 – The next seminar in the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences Seminar Series will be held at 3:30 pm in the Richardson International Auditorium, 172 Agriculture Building. Owen Roberts, Director of Research Communications, University of Guelph and Ed Cassavoy, Director of Reader Engagement and Content Commercialization, the Toronto Star, will present “So what and who cares? How agriculture can get urban media’s attention ”. Refreshments will be served at 3:00 pm in the Atrium. Everyone is welcome to attend.
Wednesday, February 15 – Join us for a special public presentation at McNally Robinson at 7 pm in their Atrium. Panel guest speakers Martin Scanlon, Harley Siemens and Teresa Chernecki will tackle the topic “Public Trust: Facts, Truth, Public Opinion”.
February 20-24 is Reading Week on the University of Manitoba campus. On Thursday, February 23, the University of Manitoba will host Open House (formerly known as Info Days) for high school students with displays in University Centre and presentations by faculties all over campus. Friday, February 24 is SET Day, with programming aimed at Grade 11 and 12 students interested in science, engineering and technology. This will include a session provided by the Departments of Human Nutritional Sciences and Food Science on “Pizza 101”. Please offer a warm welcome to any students you might see visiting our Faculty!
Tuesday, February 28 – A Department of Entomology Seminar will be presented by Claudio Stasolla, Department of Plant Science, University of Manitoba, on “The beauty of death in plant survival”. Refreshments at 10:00 am, seminar begins at 10:10 am sharp in 220 Animal Science/Entomology Building.
Tuesday, February 28 – A Human Nutritional Sciences Graduate Seminar entitled “The impact of dairy SFA on genetics, gut microbiome and fatty acids metabolism; a multi-approach to understanding the impact of dairy fats on cardiovascular health” will be presented by graduate student Ethendhar Rajendiran at 3:00 pm in the Carolyn Sifton Lecture Theatre, 130 Agriculture Building.
Wednesday, March 1 – The seventh seminar in the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences Seminar Series will be held at 3:30 pm in the Carolyn Sifton Lecture Theatre, Room 130 Agriculture Building. Dr. Selena Randall, Associate Director, Planning and Development, Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, Department of Community Health Sciences, Max Rady College of Medicine, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, will present “Made in Manitoba – Mining Big Data for Population Research”. Refreshments will be served at 3:00 pm in the Atrium. Everyone is welcome to attend.
April 24-26 – The Agricultural Institute of Canada will be holding its 2017 conference in Winnipeg. The theme is “Agricultural Innovation in a Changing Environment”. The conference will foster important discussions among policy makers, industry stakeholders, entrepreneurs and the research community about agriculture’s impact on the environment in a changing climate. AIC 2017 will also showcase world-class innovative research taking place across Canada and explore how green growth in the sector can build on a strong scientific, evidence-based foundation. Dean Karin Wittenberg is slated as one of the conference speakers. Visit http://www.aic.ca/conferences-and-events/aic2017 to stay up to date.
Friday, May 5 – MCWESTT 2017, a local, one-day conference dedicated to connecting women in engineering, science, trades, and technology, and empowering them to Create, Foster, and Lead. Master of Ceremonies for the day will be Winnipeg based comedian Dana Smith, and keynote speakers include Susan Auch, Shari Graydon and Sarah Neville. Register before Friday, March 10th to receive the limited-time early bird pricing – https://apps.apegm.mb.ca/MCWESTT2017Registration.aspx. For the first time ever, MCWESTT 2017 is offering a full day pre-conference workshop on Thursday, May 4. The WinSETT Effective Communication workshop will be facilitated by Edna Dach with guest speakers Trish Jordan and Dawn Nedohin-Macek. Thanks to the generous partnership of the NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering – Prairies, this workshop is available at a significantly discounted rate of only $75, exclusively for our conference participants. Be sure to register early as the workshop is limited to only 30 participants. http://hollettandsons.ca/winsett-leadership-program/.
STAFF AND STUDENT NEWS
Joyce Slater, Human Nutritional Sciences, was the keynote speaker on February 2nd at the 2017 ‘Rich Man Poor Man’ dinner. The event was hosted by the The Global Health Interest Group at the University of Manitoba’s College of Medicine, and raised funds for Agape Table. The title of her talk was “Food Security: As Important as MRIs”. Read more at http://news.umanitoba.ca/student-dinner-supports-agape-table/.
Dilantha Fernando, Plant Science was honored by University of Southern Queensland (USQ), in Queensland Australia. Dilantha received USQ Eminent Visiting Scholar for 2017 Award for his scholarly research and international recognition in host-pathogen interactions in wheat and canola.
Trust Beta, Food Science, participated in a follow-up meeting on ‘Nutrigenomics: Bridging the Gap between Agriculture and Human Health’ held in San Diego, CA held January 14-15 . She also attended part of the Plant and Animal Genome XXV Conference held in San Diego, CA January 14-18.
Ehsan Khafipour and his team, Terry Zhang, postdoctoral fellow, Hooman Derakhshani, Ph.D. student, and Zhangbin Cai, M.Sc. student, attended the Manitoba Swine Seminar held in Winnipeg, February 2-3.
The Department of Animal Science hosted Dr. Herman Barkema, a Professor of Epidemiology and a NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Infectious Diseases of Dairy Cattle at Veterinary School, University of Calgary, as speaker for the 2017 T.K. Cheung Annual Lecture in Animal Science. The talk was focused on the “effects of restriction in the use of antibiotics in food animals on antibiotic resistance in production animals and humans” and was based on the reports that speaker recently completed for WHO on benefits as well as possible unintended consequences of restriction of antibiotics in production animals. These reports will be used to further develop WHO’s guidelines on the use of antimicrobials in animals.
Second year Diploma in Agriculture students got involved in policy development during their attendance at the Keystone Agricultural Producers meeting. The students wrote and presented a resolution on carbon pricing, which was passed by the KAP membership. Read more at http://www.kap.mb.ca/new-releases/KAP-annual-meeting-climate-change-cgc-surplus-and-15-other-resolutions-passed.cfm.
IN THE NEWS
Alejandro Costamagna, Entomology, was quoted in the article “Preserve natural habitat and enjoy free pest control” in the Manitoba Co-operator (February 9) – read it on page 26 at http://static.agcanada.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/MBC170209.pdf.
Diploma in Agriculture students were featured in “Carbon pricing focus of KAP resolutions” in the Manitoba Co-operator (February 2) – http://www.manitobacooperator.ca/news-opinion/news/local/carbon-pricing-focus-of-kap-resolutions/
Yvonne Lawley, Plant Science, was quoted in “Season too short for cover crops? Maybe not” in the Manitoba Co-operator (February 8) – http://www.manitobacooperator.ca/crops/can-cover-crops-work-in-western-canada/.
Martin Nyachoti, Animal Science, was featured on Farmscape in the Manitoba Swine Seminar Audio Special – listen to his interview at http://audio.farmscape.com/2017/2/nyachoti-170201.mp3.
And proud dad Nazim Cicek, Biosystems Engineering, was interviewed by CBC Manitoba for the story “‘Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ for Winnipeg teen to play hockey for Turkey in international tournament ” – http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-teen-turkey-hockey-1.3967159.
PUBLICATIONS
Taylor, A.M., B.D. Amiro, M. Tenuta, and M. Gervais. 2017. Direct whole-farm greenhouse gas flux measurements for a beef cattle operation. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment. 239: 65-79.
Senthilkumar, T., D.S. Jayas, N.D.G. White, P.G. Fields and T. Gräfenhan. 2017. Detection of ochratoxin A contamination in stored wheat using near-infrared hyperspectral imaging. Infrared Physics and Technology, 81:228-235.
Divekar, M.T., C. Karunakaran, R. Lahlali, S. Kumar, V. Chelladurai, X. Liu, F. Borondics, S. Shanmugasundaram and D.S. Jayas. 2017. Effect of microwave treatment on the cooking and macronutrient qualities of pulses. International Journal of Food Properties, 20(2):409-422.
Li, J., D. Sun, H. Pu and D.S. Jayas. 2017. Determination of trace thiophanate-methyl and its metabolite carbendazin with teratogenic risk in red bell pepper (Capsicumannuum L.) by surface-enhanced Raman imaging technique. Food Chemistry, 218:543-552.
Loader TB, Taylor CG, Zahradka P, Jones PJ. 2017. Chlorogenic acid from coffee beans: evaluating the evidence for a blood pressure-regulating health claim. Nutr Rev. 2017 Jan 27. pii: nuw057. doi: 10.1093/nutrit/nuw057. [Epub ahead of print] Review. PMID: 28130503 [PubMed – as supplied by publisher]
Moghadasian, M., Alsaif, M., Le, K., Gangadaran, S., Masisi, K., Beta, T., and Shen, G. (2016) Combination effects of wild rice and phytosterols on prevention of atherosclerosis in LDL receptor knockout mice. Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry 33: 128-135.
Masisi, K., Le, K., Ghazzawi, N., Moghadasian, M., and Beta, T. (2017) Dietary corn fractions reduce atherogenesis in low density lipoprotein receptor knockout mice. Nutrition Research 37: 87-96.
Abbas, H. and R. Sri Ranjan. 2016. Effect of overhead irrigation on corn yield and quality under shallow water table conditions. Canadian Biosystems Engineering 58: 1.33-1.44. http://dx.doi.org/10.7451/CBE.2016.58.1.33
Wu Q, Tun HM, Yang X, Law YS, Khafipour E, and Shah NP†. Common distribution of gad operon in Lactobacillus brevis and its GadA contributes to efficient GABA synthesis towards cytosolic near-neutral pH. Front. Microbiol. 8:206. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2017.00206.
Plaizier JC‡, Li SC, Tun HM, and Khafipour E‡. 2017. Nutritional models of experimentally-induced subacute ruminal acidosis (SARA) differ in their impact on rumen and hindgut microbiota in dairy cows. Front. Microbiol. 7:2128. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2016.02128.
Rabbi MF, Munyaka PM, Eissa N, Metz-Boutigue MH, Khafipour E, and Ghia JE†. 2017. Human catestatin alters gut microbiota composition in mice. Front. Microbiol. 7:2151. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2016.02151.
Derakhshani H, Tun HM, Cardoso FC, Plaizier JC, Khafipour E‡, and Loor. JJ‡. 2017. Linking peripartal dynamics of rumen microbiota to dietary changes and production parameters. Front. Microbiol. 7:2143. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2016.02143.
Farenhorst A‡, Li R, Jahan M,Tun HM, Mi R, Mudiyansel IA, Kumar A, and Khafipour E ‡. 2017. Bacteria in drinking water sources of a First Nation reserve in Canada. Sci. Total Environ. 575: 813–819. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.09.138.
Diochon, A., N. Basiliko, M. Krzic, T.T. Yates, E. Olson, J. Masse, B. Amiro, and D. Kumaragamage. 2016. Profiling undergraduate soil science education in Canada: Status and projected trends. Canadian Journal of Soil Science. On-line version available. (This paper was Editor’s Choice in the Canadian Journal of Soil Science – http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/journal/cjss)
GENERAL NEWS
The Endowment Fund Committee of the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences is once again seeking proposals from students, alumni, and academic and support staff of the Faculty for special projects requiring funding. This year, approximately $247,000 is available to fund a variety of projects, from teaching equipment/projects to student competitions and field trips. The fund has also been allocated for visiting scientists and lecturers, conferences and workshops, and library acquisitions.Please submit an application via email to Heather Wiebe at Heather [dot] Wiebe [at] umanitoba [dot] ca by NOON Tuesday, February 28, 2017. Complete Endowment Fund details and application form are available online at: http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/afs/endowment/index.html.
The Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences is seeking its first Indigenous Scholar. Application deadline is February 27, 2017. Full details including a link to the position description at http://news.umanitoba.ca/new-fund-helps-faculty-recruit-indigenous-scholar/.
Our fiscal year end of March 31, 2017 is just around the corner. Visit our Year End at the University website (http://umanitoba.ca/admin/financial_services/comptrollers/yearend.htm) to review the Year End Guidelines & Schedule for 2016-17 which includes frequently asked questions, key deadline dates, checklists & your Financial Services contacts to help you through the process.
The Prairie Organic Grain Initiative is accepting applications for on-farm research trails and on-farm demonstration plots. They encourage on-farm projects that represent a collaboration between certified organic growers and researchers with demonstrated experience conducting research in organic agriculture. Both research and demonstration projects are encouraged. Funding of up to $5000 is available for on-farm trials and up to $2000 is available for on-farm demonstrations. Application deadline: March 15. For more information contact Iris at iris [dot] vaisman [at] prairieorganicgrain [dot] org.
The Office of Indigenous Achievement has created three new awards that will celebrate the exceptional achievements and contributions of Indigenous students who are going above and beyond to make the University of Manitoba an inclusive and supportive learning environment. There are three categories for the awards: Community Builder, Outstanding Achievement, and Trailblazer. The criteria for each category and nomination instructions are available on their website: http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/Indigenous-Student-Awards-Of-Excellence.html. They encourage you to nominate students who deserve recognition. The winners will be honoured at an afternoon celebration that will take place on Friday, March 24, 2017 during Indigenous Awareness Week. Any staff, faculty, or student from the U of M can nominate an Indigenous student. The deadline for nominations is Tuesday, February 28, 2017 at 4:30 p.m.