A successful annual meeting
The 5th annual meeting of the strategic research centre GenSAP was held 15 - 16 November at the Legoland Hotel & Conference Center in Billund, Denmark. The 2-day programme offered a rich variety of talks and fruitful debates in colourful surroundings with Lego bricks everywhere.
Many relevant Danish breeding companies and research groups were present as well as world-leading international researchers in the GenSAP center, with the purpose of building the foundation for the next generation genomic selection tools for genetic improvement schemes in agricultural plants and animals.
GenSAP is anchored at the Center for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics (QGG) at Aarhus University Foulum (Denmark), with important, contributing research environments at Aarhus University, Flakkebjerg, University of Copenhagen and Aalborg University. The GenSAP meeting in Billund gathered researchers from all contributing universities, representatives from the industry and researchers from across the world as far away as Australia and USA.
In his welcome talk, Centre Director, professor Mogens Sandø Lund gave an update on the GenSAP Center’s research results, and underlined that most mile stones in the work packages have been met, more than 60 manuscripts have been published, and improvements and research results have been implemented directly in the industry. As the GenSAP project is coming to an end in December 2018, Mogens Sandø Lund announced that a draft for a continuation project is on the way.
The 2 days offered a total of 6 scientific sessions, targeting the overall challenges addressed in GenSAP. From the Use of full sequence data to Predictions across breeds and populations, Plants and new animal species, Non-additive genetic effects, Analysis of large datasets and Estimation and control of inbreeding using Genomics, the topics of the 6 sessions reflected the research results of the center from 2013 until now.
A special feature in the programme was 3 minute speed talks by PhD students and postdocs, presenting their research projects. The speed talks were accompanied by poster sessions, where questions could be asked and the researchers could elaborate on their projects.