NCLE approach to research, education and outreach resonates with new...

NCLE approach to research, education and outreach resonates with new academics and students.
The National Centre for Livestock and the Environment owes its beginnings to a small core of people who believed
that working together was the best way to contribute towards a thriving, sustainable agriculture industry. NCLE
research, education and outreach began with this team asking the question “How can we help?” Since the first
farm-scale, whole-system, multidisciplinary team study - the La Broquerie Project - this team has grown. As
researchers with NCLE continue to share their approach with students, scientists, industry, government, and other
industry stakeholders, the impact of our efforts grows. With this expanding network of partners, our capacity to
understand livestock production systems and the interconnectedness of land-livestock-society is improved. This
equates to more meaningful information for the sector.
Recent academic additions Drs. Ehsan Khafipour, Claudia Narvaez, Kateryn Rochon and Emma McGeough bring
new expertise and energy to the NCLE team.
Although Dr. Ehsan Khafipour has been part of the NCLE team for a number of years, having
worked closely with the late Dr. Denis Krause, his recent academic appointment in the faculty
has solidified this relationship. Ehsan aims to advance human and animal health through an
improved understanding of microbial communities present in the gut. This knowledge will be
used to develop early intervention/prevention strategies for diseases and disorders. He is
currently involved in disease-health research with dairy and beef cattle, swine and poultry.
He is also working closely with a diverse group of NCLE researchers to characterize microbial
communities in other environments, such as manure digesters, compost, soil, and water, in order to address
ecologically important questions. Exemplifying the multidisciplinary model, Ehsan holds a joint appointment with
both the Department of Animal Science and the Department of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases
where his studies focus on human and animal models as they relate to inflammatory bowel disease.
Complementing this microbial expertise emphasizing human and animal health is expanded
expertise in food safety. Dr. Claudia Narvaez, a recent addition in the Department of Food
Science, intends to focus on the development of suitable pre-harvest interventions to reduce
the presence of pathogenic organisms in livestock and the associated risk to human health.
Dr. Narvaez received her PhD. at Texas Tech University and was a visiting fellow with AAFCLacombe, Alberta prior to joining the University of Manitoba. Claudia maintains her research
relationships with AAFC, being a part of projects involving commercial processing and
packaging procedures to safeguard meat products against bacterial contamination and to
ensure sustained quality.
Dr. Kateryn Rochon joined the Department of Entomology last year to study ectoparasites
that pose a risk to livestock health. Her work linked to the relationships between arthropodmicrobe-livestock interactions, emerging and re-emerging diseases, and geographic
distribution of disease vectors will be critical to our ability to control threats such as bovine
anaplasmosis in Western Canada. Kateryn also monitors the occurrence of blacklegged ticks
in Manitoba through the Blacklegged Tick Passive Surveillance Program. “Lyme disease can be
transmitted by blacklegged ticks which are active until November. If anyone finds a
blacklegged tick, they should send it to me,” advises Rochon. For Kateryn to properly
document the occurrence, be sure to include a competed information form with the tick,
available at wallisroughley.ca/ticksurveillance.html.
The arrival of Dr. Emma McGeough as an assistant professor in sustainable grassland/
livestock production systems, is part of a collective effort across the prairies to build muchneeded forage expertise and capacity. Emma grew up on a mixed cattle and poultry farm in
Ireland, and initially moved to Canada as an NSERC visiting fellow with AAFC-Lethbridge to
work in the area of Life Cycle Assessment of greenhouse gas emissions for livestock
production systems. She is already engaged in teaching, research and outreach programs
related to sustainable forage-based livestock production in Manitoba. You may have had a
chance to meet her at the annual Pasture Tour in the Interlake or the Manitoba Forage
Council/MAFRI hay and silage information and demo day in Neepawa this summer.
New additions to the NCLE team infuse established scientists with new ideas, fresh perspectives and extend our
web of connections and interconnections within both academia and industry. The same can be said for graduate
students. Increasingly students are actively seeking graduate project opportunities with scientists working in the
whole-systems arena. Through their challenging field and course programs, these students practice critical thinking
and problem solving skills that will serve them well in their future careers. Advisors encourage students to work
through challenges that arise during the course of their inherently complex research projects. The calibre of these
students does not go unnoticed, as evident by the numerous awards and acknowledgements they receive (see
Instant Update for a list of student awards at conferences over the summer).
Consider Jolene Rutter, MSc student and 2012 recipient of the NSERC Alexander Graham Bell
Canada Graduate Scholarship. While monitoring greenhouse gas emissions during
composting of separated hog slurry solids, Jolene observed shortcomings in the capacity of
some of her research equipment. Not to be deterred, she critically analyzed her methodology
and built upon previous literature to develop operating procedures and analysis techniques
that she was able to utilize for her experiment the following year (learn more). While
completing her studies, Jolene also works part time with Green Manitoba as the organic
waste program assistant, lending her expertise to developing a program that provides
support for composting initiatives across Manitoba.
Graduate student Amanda Taylor is no stranger to systems-level research. Amanda’s MSc
research looking at field scale carbon dynamics under different cropping systems introduced
her to systems level research. Her current PhD research is a characterization of greenhouse
gas dynamics in cattle grazing systems over an entire year (learn more). Now into her third
year of systems-based research, she offers some insights as to what agricultural systems
research means. “A real system doesn’t necessarily conform to the standard experimental
design of strict controls, replication and randomization. But we can still learn a great deal
about how these systems function and what we need to do to understand them better. To
me it’s about seeing the whole farm – the landscape impact.”
Reflecting on this further, Amanda sums it up with “Maybe it’s a bit like art – you need to stand back to appreciate
it more, rather than looking at every brush stroke.” Everyone who is a part of the NCLE team has their own
interpretation of sustainable agriculture systems research, but the goal is still the same – to answer the question
“How can we help?” We look forward to working with these up and coming academics and the dynamic, energetic
students involved in our program!
Learn more about these scientists, students and their research at:
http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/afs/ncle/what_is_ncle/research_community.html
The NCLE research community is benefitting from recent academic hires. Drs. Emma McGeough, Claudia Narvaez, Ehsan
Khafipour and Kateryn Rochon expand our capacity in forage-cattle systems, meat pathogens and food safety, gut
microbiome and animal/human health, and ectoparasites/livestock disease relationships, respectively. They are already
applying their expertise through numerous research and education initiatives. See the feature article for details.
July 24 – Jolene Rutter and Sally Parsonage, MSc candidates, and Amanda Taylor and Krista Hanis, PhD candidates,
received presentation awards at the joint Manitoba Soil Science Society, Canadian Society of Soil Science and Canadian
Society of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology meetings held in Winnipeg, July 22-25. Their research focuses on
greenhouse gas sources and sinks in agricultural systems.
June 19 – Tawnya Ullenboom, MSc candidate, was recognized at the Canadian Society of Animal Science meetings in
Banff, AB for her presentation on residual feed intake and greenhouse gas emissions in growing beef bulls.
July 9 – Canadian Society for Biological Engineering annual meeting: Nazim Cicek, CSBE/SCGAB John Turnbull Award for
contributions to Engineering for Agricultural, Food and Biological systems in the area of Waste Management.
June 19 – Canadian Society of Animal Science annual meeting: Karin Wittenberg, CSAS Fellowship Award; Martin
Nyachoti, CSAS Excellence in Nutrition and Meat Sciences; and Gary Crow, CSAS Lifetime Membership Award. Read the
news release at http://bit.ly/1a67f0n.
New project:
Dairy research – Optimizing phosphorus nutrition of dairy cows to reduce whole-farm phosphorus (P) surpluses. Kees
Plaizier, Kim Ominski, Emma McGeough and Ehsan Khafipour. The results from this study will be used to develop
Beneficial Management Practices that better match the P supplied in feed with cow P needs. Improved management of
dietary phosphorus will reduce surpluses of dietary P, P imported as feed and excess P excreted with manure and milk
Publications:
V.L. Tkachuk, D.O. Krause, T.A. McAllister, K.E. Buckley, T. Reuter, S. Hendrick and K.H. Ominski. 2013. Assessing the
inactivation of Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis during composting of livestock carcasses. Appl. Environ.
Microbiol. 79: 3215-3224.
J.N. Ackerman, F. Zvomuya, N. Cicek and D. Flaten. 2013. Evaluation of manure-derived struvite as a phosphorus source
for canola. Can. J. Plant Sci. 93: 419–424.
E.M. Jordaan, B. Rezania and N. Cicek. 2013. Chemical-free nutrient removal and recovery by crystallization. Water
Science and Technology. 67: 2195-2201.
Graduate student thesis defense:
Victoria Tkachuk, MSc defense, August: “Inactivation of Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis and profiles
of microbial communities during composting of livestock mortalities” Co-advisors: Kim Ominski and Tim McAllister
(AAFC-Lethbridge). Victoria also received the 2012 Graduate Student Teaching Award of Merit from the North American
Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture for excellence in teaching.
Kane Christiuk, MSc defense, August: “Impact of diet on abundance and virulence properties of Escherichia coli in cattle
overwintering environments and dairy cattle” Advisors: Kim Ominski and Terri De Kievit.