Project closing conference

On our last conference organized in the project, the strategic partners introduced the current issues of the Austrian and Hungarian poultry sectors, the key challenges and the strategies applied meet them.

Two scientific presentations took place during the morning section: one about the interrelation of poultry nutrition and the gut microflora, and the other one about the use of antibiotics.

In the afternoon section, researchers of the Poultry Clinic of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna held further scientific presentations. The methodology of the identification of unknown poultry viruses by next generation sequencing was introduced to the conference participants. Viruses cause several diseases and significant economic losses in the poultry sector. The application of new technologies increases the reliability of diagnoses, and provide opportunity for flock treatments and eradication procedures.

Mycotoxins are secondary metabolic products of several microscopic fungi accumulating on the field and during storage. A significant percentage of feedstuffs contain mycotoxins, which damage the health of farm animals and decrease production output. The toxin called deoxynivalenol (DON) is the most frequently occurring toxin in cereals both in Austria and Hungary. Several information about the various negative effects of this toxin is available. However, far less is known about the interaction between mycotoxins and microbes in the gut. The participants of the conference received information on this aspect in the frames of the second speech.

The topic of the third presentation was the interaction between the pathogenic Escherichia coli and Histomonas meleagridis, a single-cell parasite. Both pathogens form parts of the intestine of chicken and other poultry species. Studying the effects of these two pathogens on each other is a real novelty.