News

Taking Biology Forward: A CPD day for secondary school teachers

Teachers taking part in Parasitology workshop.

Teachers taking part in Immunology workshop. A conference was held at Moredun in May 2022 in collaboration with the Scottish Schools Education Research Centre (SSERC) and the Royal Society of Biology for secondary school teachers across Scotland to highlight science and research resources. The aim was to help support teaching of Higher and Advanced Higher Biology. 49 teachers attended from secondary schools across Scotland and the day comprised a series of talks along with hands-on workshops.

Professor Julie Fitzpatrick gave a talk on “Livestock matters for local and global food security” and Professor Lee Innes, Dr Dave Bartley and Dr Philip Skuce spoke on “Parasites and their relationships with us and other animals”. Nine Moredun staff members hosted practical workshops for the teachers covering parasitology, immunology, microbiology and organoid cultures.

Annie McRobbie, Education Manager, Biology SSERC said: “The Royal Society of Biology Annual Teachers’ Meeting was held in May 2022 at Moredun. This was our first larger face-to-face meeting, involving teachers from across Scotland, following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moredun were incredibly supportive as the event hosts, communicating quickly to resolve challenges that arose as a result of coming out of lockdown.

Moredun offered a selection of workshops in the afternoon of our meeting, providing further insight into the work they do at the institute and how this relates to the curriculum; teachers remarked on how useful these sessions were and how approachable the staff were. Moredun researchers also presented their work in a lecture session, making direct and purposeful curricular links from their research and providing teachers with cutting-edge examples of research in the field to bring back to their learners.

Moredun was a fantastic host for our meeting and SSERC and Royal Society of Biology cannot thank you enough.”

Sheep and Goat Sm@rt Project on Tour to France

A multi-national project involving Moredun scientists to improve the uptake of digital technologies in sheep and goat farming has held its first in-person transnational workshop in France.

Around 70 researchers, farmers, lecturers and advisors from seven countries attended the event in Saint Affrique in July, which was held as part of the Sm@RT (Small Ruminant Technologies) project, led by colleagues at SRUC in partnership with Moredun Research Institute and funded by the EU Horizon 2020 research programme.

Two previous workshops had been held online due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The delegates from UK, France, Ireland, Norway, Estonia, Italy and Israel, visited two sheep farms – La Cazotte in Roquefort, which is linked to an agricultural school, and mixed dairy and meat sheep experimental farm La Fage in Aveyron – where they had the opportunity to see and learn about the use of 14 small ruminant innovative technologies.

These included virtual and connected fences, automatic feeders in the milking parlour, individual feed bins, and shed sensors for temperature, humidity, and CO2, among others.

On the second day, following a presentation about the French sheep sector,

The Sm@RT team in Saint Affrique, France.

delegates shared examples of the innovative technologies being used in their countries, including automatic weighing and water consumption in one trough, DNA sampling for lamb parentage and a hay drying machine.

Moredun’s Dr Fi Kenyon says: “It was good to see this first in-person meeting take place and the feedback has been very positive with people enjoying the opportunity to see and learn about many different innovative technologies that are available for sheep and goats.”

If you are interested in joining the network, or would like more information about the project, please visit https://smartplatform. network/

Norwegian Farmers Visit Moredun

We were delighted to welcome a group of 30 farmers from Norway to Moredun on 29th July as part of a national tour of Scotland, looking at innovation and knowledge transfer in sheep farming.

Lee Innes, Tom McNeilly, Mara Rocchi and Keith Ballingall gave short presentations and Q&A sessions to the group. and Ambre Chapuis and Marc Faber demonstrated the organoid technology and its potential to further understanding of host-pathogen interactions.

Norwegian sheep farmers find out about organoid technology.

Levy bodies unite to control liver fluke

This autumn sees the launch of a new manual to help farmers control liver fluke in grazing livestock, in a joint levy-body effort to control what can be a devastating disease.

Produced by AHDB, Hybu Cig Cymru (Meat Promotion Wales) and QMS, the manual highlights the latest research and advice on control practices to protect livestock from potential animal health and welfare damage posed by liver fluke.

The information in this booklet has been compiled by Moredun’s Dr Philip Skuce, Lesley Stubbings (LSSC Limited) and Professor Diana Williams (University of Liverpool), and produced in collaboration between AHDB, HCC and QMS.

Dr Philip Skuce said: “Sustainable fluke control continues to be a challenge in grazing livestock, even after a good summer across most of the UK! Fluke risk varies from year to year, from farm to farm and even from field to field! In this new guide, we’ve tried to help farmers, vets and advisors assess the risk of fluke, based on diagnostic testing, interfaced with information on mud snail habitat and fluke epidemiology, and illustrated through a series of genuine case studies from across the country.”

Five case studies from farmers from across the UK cover a variety of management systems and fluke risk levels.

For more information, a monthly liver fluke forecast is available through NADIS (https://nadis.org.uk/parasite-forecast/) , whilst SCOPS (https://www.scops.org.uk/ and COWS (https://www.cattleparasites. org.uk/) cover species specific advice.

You can view the manual on our website: https://bit.ly/3SljJZ2

Successful summer webinar series

As part of our partnership with NSA, we ran two joint webinars this summer. These webinars were well advertised by both partners on websites, e-news and social media and attracted good audiences. Both were recorded and the links are available to the recordings on both Moredun and NSA websites, allowing them to be re-visited at a convenient time.

Tick Tock, Don’t Let Time Run Out With Ticks:

The first was held in July on the subject of ticks and tick-borne diseases, by popular demand. Dr Mara Rocchi focussed on research and surveillance, with Elanco’s Matt Colston covering practical treatments and management of sheep. As a follow on to this webinar, we have had many inquiries regarding our work on ticks and on the progress of the Louping-Ill vaccine. https://moredun.org.uk/ resources/videos/webinar-tick-tock

Topics covered: • Biology of the tick • Surveillance (tick distribution) • How to control tick-borne diseases • Avoidance/management strategies • Vaccine production/development Scab… It’s for the Flock’s Sake:

The second webinar was held in August on the topic of sheep scab, again by popular demand, driven by Dr Stewart Burgess’ DEFRA funded Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE). This project has raised a lot of interest in this co-ordinated focus group approach to controlling scab. Stewart covered the research part of the disease, disease control, diagnostics and the RDPE project, with Lesley Stubbings, sheep advisor and project partner, leading on the more practical sheep farming aspects of the above areas. https://moredun.org.uk/ resources/videos/webinar-scab-flocks-sake

Topics covered: • Testing • Control • Quarantine