A mural of the Winnipeg skyline created entirely out of pulses was unveiled at the workshop. It was created by the Communications and Media Services department at St. Boniface Hospital.
National pulse workshop held in Winnipeg a success
Winnipeg played host recently to the 10th Canadian Pulse Research Workshop, a timely event to be held in 2016, the Year of the Pulse.
About 190 researchers participated with 103 poster and oral presentations on a wide range of research involving peas, beans, lentils and chickpeas (with a little on soybean, which is not actually classified as a pulse). All aspects of pulse research were included, from breeding to agronomy to pathology to the contribution of pulses to the environment to issues dealing with utilization and nutrition.
Did you know that for every 2 servings of cereals that you eat, it is recommended that you eat one serving of pulses?
The University of Manitoba was well represented at this workshop. Members of the organizing committee included Sue Arntfield, Food Science, as Chair. Rotimi Aluko, Human Nutritional Science and Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals, looked after awards and Jitendra Paliwal, Biosystems Engineering, served as Program Chair. Other members of the program committee included Mario Tenuta, Soil Science, Yvonne Lawley and Fouad Daayf, both from Plant Science, Peter Zahradka, St. Boniface Research Centre, and Carla Taylor, Human Nutritional Sciences and St. Boniface Research Centre.
Many oral and poster presentations were made by staff and students at the University of Manitoba. Rebecca Mollard from the Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals was the keynote speaker for the section on Nutrition and Food. She presented “Acute effects of extruded pulse products on glycemic response, appetite, and food intake in adults”.
Others from the University of Manitoba making oral presentations were Jaime Clark, Adam Franczyk, Tara Loader, Ariana Mudryj, Matt Nosworthy and Carla Taylor (Human Nutritional Sciences), Charles Geddes and Laura Schmidt (Plant Science) and Fernanda Gouvea-Pereira (Soil Science).
Poster presentations featuring University of Manitoba students and staff were given by Arbia Arfaoui, Navneet Brar, Jonathan Rosset, Gagandip Sidhu, Cassandra Tkachuk (Plant Science), Alejandro Costamagna and Tharshinidevy Nagalingam (Entomology), Trust Beta, Kendra Joyal, Martin Scanlon, Lan Shi, Nasibeh Younessinaki Sinaki, Matthew Wells and Yilian (Elena) Xia (Food Science), Gerardo Medina and Matt Nosworthy (Human Nutritional Sciences) and Mario Tenuta (Soil Science).
Students from the U of M won several awards at the event.
Fernanda Gouvea-Pereira from the Department Soil Science, was the graduate student winner of a special video competition to celebrate the year of the pulse where researchers were asked to submit short videos highlighting their research. A compilation of these videos was shown at the workshop
Students also performed well in the oral and poster presentation competitions. Second place in the oral competition went to Tara Loader who presented on “Black Beans reduce Hypertension-Related vascular remodelling: a dietary intervention study in Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats”. Second place poster competition was given to Yilian (Elena) Xia who presented on “Effect of cooking on anti-nutritional factors in egg noodles supplemented with pulse flour” and third place in the poster competition was given to Gagandip Sidhu who presented on “Polyamine-induced changes in the expression of antioxidative genes in pinto bean seedlings under excess soil moisture”.
The participation by staff and students from the University of Manitoba in contributing to the success of this workshop is greatly appreciated.