Industry-research Collaboration and Technology Adoption: An International Perspective

In this presentation A/Prof Cottrell will outline the structure of pork research in Australia, including organisations such as Australian Pork Limited and Australasian Pork Research Limited (APRIL) and how they collaborate to fund pork research in Australia. A/Prof Cottrell will then outline collaborations between university partners, producers and allied industry with a focus on technology adoption. Specific examples will include the research behind AusScan, a near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) based system for calculating the pig fecal and total digestable energy of grains. This represents a research endeavour in excess of 20 years and researchers in every state of Australia. AusScan is utilised in Australia and increasingly overseas, with calibration s available for wheat, triticale, sorghum, corn, barley, soy, and canola meal. Other areas of collaboration surround improved understanding regarding the impact of heat stress on livestock and nutritional intervention strategies. This has had a particular focus on foetal impacts and the gastrointestinal tract. Heat stress has been observed to increase adiposity in multiple studies, with experimentation in our laboratory indicating that this is in part linked to reductions in foetal myogenesis, which reduces the propensity for post-natal growth. The gastrointestinal tract is susceptible to damage during heat events, but is intrinsically difficult to investigate. The effects of heat stress are multifaceted, stemming from reductions in blood flow and coupled with increased oxidative stress. Research within our laboratory has helped to understand this process, highlighting that distal regions of the gastrointestinal tract are more susceptible to damage than proximal sections. Orally bioavailable supplements such as betaine and selenium have been shown to protect the gastrointestinal tract and accumulate in multiple organs where they may confer additional benefits in ameliorating the impacts of heat stress. Furthermore phytochemicals have been demonstrated to ameliorate heat stress, despite purported low oral bioavailability. Due to the similarities between the human and pig gastrointestinal tract this research has gained significant interest from the biomedical field, with the research team involved in the development of capsule technology to not only quantify signalling changes in the pig gastrointestinal tract but to develop methodologies to interact with the enteric nervous system to alter behaviour.