AG e-news November 20, 2017

News and events from the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences

UPCOMING EVENTS

Tuesday, November 21 – There will be a Food and Human Nutritional Sciences Graduate Student Seminar at 3:00 pm in Room 206 Human Ecology Building. Roxie Koohgoli, Human Nutritional Sciences M.Sc. student, will present “The effect of flax protein on renal disease in an orthologous mouse model of Polycystic Kidney Disease”.

Tuesday, November 21 – There will be a Department of Plant Science Special Seminar with Pabitra Paramanya, MCC India, on “Impact of Diversion Based Irrigation Systems in West Bengal, India” at 3:00 pm in the Carolyn Sifton Lecture Theatre, 130 Agriculture Building. Mr. Paramanya holds an MSc degree in Agricultural Science from Calcutta University in India and has been working with farmers in India in various capacities since 2009.

Wednesday, November 22 – There will be a Soil Science Seminar with Kevin Baron, Ph.D., Solum Valley Biosciences on “My Career in Agriculture: Charting A Path Towards Entrepreneurship” at 12:30 p.m., Room 346 Ellis Building. Everyone welcome.

Thursday, November 23 – An Advanced Plant Science Seminar will be held in the Carolyn Sifton Lecture Theatre, 130 Agriculture Building at 3:30 pm. Cunchun Yang, Ph.D. Student, Department of Plant Science, will be presenting “The Regulation of Intrinsic Signaling in Brassica napus defending against Leptosphaeria maculans”.  All are welcome to attend. Coffee at 3:00 pm in the Atrium.

Friday, November 24 – The Department of Soil Science presents three conference-length seminars beginning at 12:30 pm in 346 Ellis Building. At 12:30 pm, Kristy Anderson, M.Sc. student, Department of Soil Science, will present “The Right to Drinking Water in First Nation Communities”. At 12:50 pm, Amy Mangin, Research Technician, Department of Soil Science, will present “Optimizing Nitrogen Fertility Management Strategies for High-Yielding Spring Wheat in Manitoba”. At 1:10 pm, Matthew Wood, M.Sc. student, Department of Soil Science, will present “Nitrous Oxide Emissions from Nitrogen Fertilizer Additions to Spring Wheat in Manitoba”. Everyone welcome.

Monday, November 27 – Join us for two Special Presentations by Dr. Lilong Chai, candidate for Canada Research Chair Tier II position in Integrative Analysis for Sustainable Food Systems. Lecture Presentation – Skype delivery at 9:30 am in 134 Agriculture Bldg on “Ammonia Emissions from Livestock Operations”. Research Presentation – Skype delivery at 1:00 pm in 219 Animal Science Bldg on “The Challenges Facing Animal Agriculture Systems: Environmental Impact, Climate Change, and Animal Welfare”. Coffee and donuts provided – all are welcome!

Tuesday, November 28 – A Department of Animal Science Seminar will be held on in Room 219 Animal Science Building at 10:00 am. Samuel Ariyibi, M.Sc. student, will make the scientific presentation “High Inclusion Levels of Canola Meal (CM) in Broiler Chicken Nutrition” and Jordan Dahmer, M.Sc. student, will make the poster presentation “Perennial and Annual Forages for Stockpile Grazing of Pregnant Beef Heifers in Late Fall/Early Winter”.  All are welcome to attend.

Tuesday, November 28 –  A Department of Entomology Seminar will be presented by Arash Kheirodin, Department of Entomology, on “Effects of landscape structure on the abundance of Cereal Leaf Beetle Oulema melanopus (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) and its natural enemies, including the parasitoid Tetrastichus julis (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae).” Refreshments at 10:00 am, seminar begins at 10:10 am sharp in 220 Animal Science/Entomology Building. All are welcome.

Thursday, November 30 – An Advanced Plant Science Seminar will be held in the Carolyn Sifton Lecture Theatre, 130 Agriculture Building at 3:30 pm. Md Harunur Rashid, Ph.D. Student, Department of Plant Science, will be presenting “Genetic and Genomic Studies of Rlm6, a Blackleg Resistance Gene of B-genome Using Brassica napus x Brassica juncea Interspecific Hybrids”.  All are welcome to attend. Coffee at 3:00 pm in the Atrium.

Friday, December 1 – There will be a Soil Science Seminar with Dr. Saman Dharmakeerthi, Department of Soil  Science, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka on “Organic Carbon Dynamics in Pyrogenic Organic Matter  Amended Soils” at 12:30 pm in 346 Ellis Building.

Tuesday, December 5 – A Department of Animal Science Seminar will be held on in Room 219 Animal Science Building at 10:00 am. Dipana Maharjan, M.Sc. student, will make the extension presentation “Use of Needle free Injection Device (NFID) for vaccination in beef cattle”.  All are welcome to attend.

Wednesday, December 6 – The fourth seminar in the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences 2017-2018 Seminar Series will be held at 3:30 pm in the Carolyn Sifton Lecture Theatre, 130 Agriculture Building. Dr. Jared Carlberg, Agribusiness and Agricultural Economics, will present “Measuring Potential Public Healthcare Cost Savings from Mitigation of Food-Related Chronic Diseases”.  Refreshments will be served at 3:00 pm in the Atrium. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Friday, December 8 – There will be a Soil Science Seminar with Dr. Alex Koiter, Department of Geography, Brandon University “The Geography of My Academic Path” at 12:30 pm in 346 Ellis Building.

Wednesday, December 13 and Thursday, December 14 – The 2017 Manitoba Agronomists Conference themed “Managing  Crops to Maintain Markets” will be held in Room 172 Agriculture Building and via webcast. The cost is $225.  Register by December 1 to take advantage of the early bird rate of $185.  Registration closes December 8. Register early for Winnipeg as space is limited. Graduate students are invited to attend as well as submit posters.  Poster requirements and deadlines as well as registration information are on the MAC website at www.manitobaagronomistsconference.ca. Any inquiries can be directed to the MAC Coordinator, Rachel Sydor at mbagconf@umanitoba.ca or 204-474-8473.

Thursday, December 14 – A special seminar in advance of the Fields on Wheels conference will feature Mr. Mike Gifford, Former Chief Agricultural Trade Negotiator for Canada, at 12 noon in 307 Tier Building. His topic is “What does NAFTA mean to Western Canada?”. Mike Gifford served as Canada’s chief agricultural trade negotiator and principal agricultural trade policy advisor to the ministers of agriculture and trade. He served as the chairman of the GATT International Meat Council and acted as the chief Canadian agricultural negotiator in the Canada/US Free Trade Agreement, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations. Since retiring from the federal public service, Mike has provided advice to a wide range of domestic and foreign clients in both the public and private sectors and has served as a member of a WTO panel

Friday, December 15 – Save the date! The 22nd Annual Fields on Wheels Conference is themed “NFATA 2018: Implications for Agricultural Trade and Transportation”. This one-day conference will take place at the Four Points South Hotel, Winnipeg. More details including complete speaker list, and online registration at  http://ctrf.ca/?page_id=4668. Early bird registration ($295 plus GST) ends November 24, regular registration $345 plus GST.

Friday, December 15 – The Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals invites you to attend their Holiday Party in the RCFFN Atrium, 196 Innovation Drive 1:30 pm – 4:30 pm. Please RSVP by December 5, 2017 to rcffn@umanitoba.ca or 204-474-9989.

STAFF AND STUDENT NEWS

Rotimi Aluko, Food and Human Nutritional Sciences, has been named to the list of 2017 Highly Cited Researcher in the Agricultural Sciences category by Thomson Reuter’s Clarivate Analytics. The recognition is for his multiple publications over the past 11 years that rank globally in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year in Web of Science. According to the citation “Highly Cited Researchers are leading the way in solving the world’s biggest challenges.” Full list of researchers can be found at the following website: https://clarivate.com/hcr/2017-researchers-list/. You can also watch the video of what it means to be a highly cited researcher: https://clarivate.com/hcr/mean-highly-cited/.

Martin Scanlon, Associate Dean (Research) and Food and Human Nutritional Sciences, presented a talk on controlling the manufacture of Asian wheat flour noodles in a session chaired by George W Bush’s appointment as the US undersecretary for research, education and economics for Agriculture. The session, New Technological Innovation and Food Safety, was part of the annual meeting of the Chinese Institute of Food Science and Technology held in Wuxi, China on November 8-9. Two days earlier Martin presented a seminar on research opportunities at the University of Manitoba in the Department of Food Science and Engineering at Nanjing University of Finance & Economics. Martin also visited researchers at Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China.

Laurie Connor, Animal Science, was an invited speaker at the National Pork Board’s first Pig Welfare Symposium November 7-8 in Des Moines Iowa. Her presentation was entitled “Sow lameness in different housing systems: what factors should we consider?”

Chengbo Yang, Animal Science, was invited to give a talk entitled “Gut chemosensing in gut development, efficiency and health for sustainable animal production” at the Department of Biology at the Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario on October 20.

Kristen Podolsky-MacMillan, Agronomist in Residence, Plant Science,  was invited to speak at the Western Forum on Pest Management annual meeting held in Winnipeg on October 27.  Kristen’s topic was on current and emerging soybean pests.

Dilantha Fernando, Plant Science, also presented at the Western Forum on Pest Management on the introduction of a new management tool to manage blackleg disease in canola. The title of his presentation was Canola Industry Blackleg Labeling Model: a process for successful blackleg mitigation and reducing R-gene breakdown. Dilantha presented on the findings of a new disease management tool he and his colleagues along with his students have investigated, and a method introduced to reduce the incidence of the most destructive canola disease in Canada. The seed companies have started labeling their varieties with the R-genes they carry, allowing this strategy to move in the right direction, helping growers, the industry and the Canadian economy.

The Department of Biosystems Engineering hired a new technician, Marcel Lehmann, to support research activities in the Grain Storage Research Laboratory and at the Alternative Village.

Danny Mann, Biosystems Engineering, travelled to Chicago November 16-17 to attend meetings of the Board of Trustees of the American Society for Agricultural & Biological Engineers.

Carla Taylor and Peter Zahradka, Food and Human Nutritional Sciences and Canadian Centre for Agri-Food Research in Health and Medicine, attended the First World NCD Congress 2017 in Chandigarh, India during November 4-6 where they both gave invited presentations in the “Nutritional Interventions to Alter CVDs” session.

Dylan Mackay, Food and Human Nutritional Sciences and now with the George and Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation, gave the 31st Gwen E. Leslie Memorial Lecture at the Manitoba Association of Home Economists’ annual meeting in Brandon on November 19. His topic was “Food, Finding the Real Facts”.

Kees Plaizier, Animal Science, attended the editors meeting of the Canadian Science Publishing in Ottawa on November 9-10 in his role as Editor in Chief of the Canadian Journal of Animal Science. 

The Agribusiness Students Association hosted the annual Growing the Opportunities Dinner on November 8 at the Metropolitan Entertainment Centre. In attendance were over 16 companies represented by 65 individuals, along with 98 agricultural and food sciences students and five faculty members during this valuable evening of networking.

The recordings of the most recent Faculty seminar by Dr. Iain Davidson-Hunt along with the 9th Annual Kraft Lecture with Dr. Brady Deaton have been added to the seminar archive page – see past seminars online at www.umanitoba.ca/afs/seminars/.

IN THE NEWS

Kateryn Rochon and Jordan Bannerman, Entomology, were quoted in the article “The invasion of the biting lady bug in Manitoba” in Maclean’s (November 6) – http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/the-invasion-of-the-biting-lady-bug-in-manitoba/

The FAFS Mentorship Program was featured on UM Today at http://news.umanitoba.ca/bringing-together-women-in-agriculture/.

Michele Rogalsky, School of Agriculture, was interviewed in the article “Smart stuff” in Country Guide (November 17) – see page 20 at https://static.agcanada.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CGW171107.pdf.

Brady Deaton, the 9th annual Kraft Lecturer, was quoted in the article “Local control key to better resource management” in the Manitoba Co-operator (November 9) – https://www.manitobacooperator.ca/news-opinion/news/local/u-of-m-kraft-lecturer-says-local-control-key-to-better-resource-management/.

PUBLICATIONS

Hwang, T., and Beta, T. (2018) Influence of heat and moisture treatment on carotenoids, phenolic content, and antioxidant capacity of orange maize flour. Food Chemistry 246: 58-64.

Kim E, Leung H, Akhtar N, Li J, Barta J, Wang Y, YANG C, and Kiarie E. (2017). Growth performance, gastrointestinal measurements and apparent retention of components in broiler chickens fed corn-soybean meal diet without or with exogenous epidermal growth factor upon challenge with Eimeria. Poultry Science, 96(10): 3676-3686.

Brewin, D.G., T. Schmitz, J.F. Nolan, & R.S. Gray. (2017). Grain Transportation Policy Reform in Western Canada. Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d’agroeconomie, 65(4): 643-665.

Hajihasanni, A., Tenuta, M., Gulden, R. 2017. Monoxenic Rearing of Ditylenchus weischeri and D-dipsaci and Microplot Examination of the Host Suitability of Yellow Pea to D-weischeri. Plant Protection Science 53: 254-264.

Jordan Cyril Roberts, Argenis R. Rodas-González, M. Juarez, Oscar Lopez-Campos, Ivy L Larsen, J. L Aalhus. 2017. Tenderness and sensory attributes of eleven muscles from carcasses within the Canadian cull cow grades. Canadian Journal of Animal Science. https://doi-org.uml.idm.oclc.org/10.1139/CJAS-2017-0105.

Sihag J, Jones PJH. 2017. Oleoylethanolamide: The role of a bioactive lipid amide in modulating eating behaviour. Obes Rev. 2017 Nov 10. doi: 10.1111/obr.12630. [Epub ahead of print] Review.

GENERAL NEWS

The Department of Food and Human Nutritional Sciences invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track position at the rank of Assistant Professor – Food Systems and Human Health.  Closing date for applications is January 15, 2018. For more information, please visit https://viprecprod.ad.umanitoba.ca/DEFAULT.ASPX?REQ_ID=00395.

Call for Poster Presentations – Direct Farm Manitoba and the Prairie Fruit Growers Association are joining forces this year to put on a combined one day conference for producers, growers, market coordinators and anyone interested in direct marketing local food and value added products in Manitoba. There will be interesting speakers, a tradeshow along with ample time to network and have some fun. We know that this community of producers can learn a lot from each other and this year we want to create a variety of ways for you to share your unique expertise. Would you be interested in putting together a poster presentations for the conference ? These would be visual displays using pictures, captions, text and diagrams to share your story. Have you mastered the best design for a high tunnel to grow your vegetables? Perhaps you trialed a new feed with your livestock this year and can share your results? Experimenting with irrigation options…. Start a conversation via a poster! Posters will be displayed for all conference registrants to see and mingle through. Hang out near your poster and start some great conversation with others who are interested in what you are doing. Poster presenters will be eligible for a discounted conference registration (one student rate) for their trouble! Interested? Send your name, bio, and a brief description of your presentation to events@directfarmmanitoba.ca by December 15th, 2017.

Call for Poster Abstracts – The 6th Native Prairie Restoration/Reclamation Workshop will be in Saskatoon, SK on February 7 & 8, 2018. Deadline for poster abstracts is December 8th, 2017, 11:59 pm CST. The Workshop will include oral presentations, case studies, panel discussion, trade show and poster session. The theme for the workshop is Look to the Future, Learn from the Past. To submit a poster, please email: caitlinmroz@hotmail.com by December 8, 2017 at 11:59 CST. All presenters must register for the event. To register: http://www.pcap-sk.org/upcoming-events-workshops/2018-nprrw.

Certificate of Merit Call for Nominations – The Certificate of Merit is presented by the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences and the School of Agriculture in recognition of leadership with agricultural organizations and outstanding service to the community at large. Each year two Certificates of Merit are presented, normally, one to a graduate of the Agriculture Diploma program, and one to a graduate of the Agriculture Degree program. Nominations are considered by the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences Executive Committee and must be received no later than January 12, 2018. Nominations should include a letter from the nominator describing the nominee’s leadership contributions and service to the community.  Letters of support may also be included. More information including a list of previous recipients can be found at http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/afs/school/merit.html.

Bees and Trees!  Beekeeping for the Hobbyist runs 9 Wednesdays beginning January 17, 2018 – learn more or register via http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/afs/dept/entomology/programs/Beekeeping.html. Manitoba Arborists’ Training & Licensing Course has its next in-class and online course intake in January 2018 – visit http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/afs/arborists/index.html.

Do you have high cholesterol? The University of Manitoba is conducting a study to investigate the effect of natural plant compounds on blood cholesterol concentrations. Genetic testing will be done in this study. Participants will be compensated for their contribution to this study. For more information: Phone: (204) 474-7091  Email: GenePredict-PS@umanitoba.ca, Website: www.rcffn.ca

Crystal Jorgenson