Engineering Biology in Poultry - From Discovery to Application Webinar

The second webinar in the Roslin Engineering Biology Hub series will explore how engineering biology is advancing our understanding of chicken development and enabling faster generation of gene-edited lines.

Bringing together academic research and an industry perspective from Cobb-Vantress, the session will consider how these capabilities could support poultry breeding, alongside the opportunities and barriers to their practical application.

Translating and Scaling Innovation: Lessons from Crops Applied to Livestock

Dr Mark Cigan (Managing Director, Genetic Innovation, Cobb-Vantress)

• Moving from laboratory discovery to on-farm commercial application requires time, cross-functional teams, investment, regulatory approval, IP protection, and producer and consumer trust.
  
• Early crop-industry failures often reflected an unclear product vision, poor coordination between biotechnology and breeding, and insufficient focus on economic value.
  
• These lessons reinforced the importance of “starting with the end in mind”: traits must create value, benefit the animal, remain durable, and perform across commercial breeding populations.
  
• Building on these principles, crop and swine biotechnology examples illustrate how innovation can be translated into differentiated, scalable poultry products.
  

This Webinar series will feature presentations from researchers in academia and industry who are developing new capabilities, generating valuable data and resources, and applying engineering biology approaches across farmed species.