On 26-28 April 2023, the 1st Regional Meeting of the European Federation of Animal Science (EAAP) took place in Nitra, the first meeting of its kind at the Central and Eastern European level. The organiser was the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra.
Experts from fifteen countries addressed important challenges currently faced by livestock production, presented key discoveries in the fields of genetics, nutrition, management and welfare of livestock and focused on new approaches applicable in practice.
A significant new element of the regional conference was the focus on the problems and issues being addressed in this part of Europe, which was due to the fact that the vast majority of experts were scientists from Central and Eastern European countries, including a number of researchers from Czech institutions such as the Institute of Animal Science in Prague or the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague.
The Department of Genetics and Breeding of Farm Animals focused on genomic evaluation of livestock, especially health and general resistance indicators in dairy cows or fertility and ultrasound-measured parts in beef cattle breeds. Interesting presentations were given on genomic selection in pigs and on the approach to evaluating health records and drug consumption in sows and their use in breeding. In small ruminant genetics, the interaction of the ovine genome with Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis infection was discussed, as well as genetic diversity characterizing the population structure of regional goat breeds in Bohemia and Slovakia.
The department of Cattle Breeding presented results of research on milk components suitable for the assessment of metabolic status and energy balance of dairy cows, and an interesting presentation dealt with the development of economic identifiers on Czech dairy cattle farms.
Researchers from the Livestock Technology and Management department discussed the influence of stable climate indicators on performance and milking frequency in automatic milking systems, or the use of infrared thermography in the evaluation of the relationship between rectal temperature, eye temperature and ambient temperature.