CGIL Seminar – Oral presentation / paper discussion by students from ANSC*6210: Principles of Selection in Animal Breeding course

This week we are pleased to welcome six graduate students from the University of Guelph presenting for us on Friday, March 21st, 2025, as part of the course ANSC*6210: Principles of Selection in Animal Breeding. The seminar will begin at 1:30 PM EDT/EST on the virtual platform Microsoft Teams. The titles of the papers they will be presenting are: 

• "Estimation of Genetic Parameters for Pork Quality, Novel Carcass, Primal-Cut and Growth Traits in Duroc Pig (Wilson et al., 2020)" – Justice Bless Dorleku 

• "The effects of breeding and selection on lactation in dairy cattle (Cole et al., 2023)" – Ranim Elias 

• "A structural UGDH variant associated with standard Munchkin cats (Strucket al., 2020)" – Guyue Renke 

• "Mitigation of greenhouse gases in dairy cattle via genetic selection: Incorporating methane emissions into the breeding goal (González-Recio et al., 2020)" – Ibtehaz Hussen Rony 

• "Applications of genomics selection in poultry (Wolc et al. 2014)" – Tunde Thomas 

• “Optimizing purebred selection to improve crossbred performance (Barani et al., 2024)” – Kaiyue Zheng 

Speaker Bios:  

Justice Bless Dorleku is pursuing a Ph.D. in Animal Biosciences at the University of Guelph and is affiliated with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. His research focuses on the impact of increased pig harvest weights on carcass composition, product quality, and palatability, with implications for genomic selection. He works under the guidance of Dr. Angela Cánovas, Dr. Marcio Duárte, and Dr. Manuel Juarez (AAFC). Bless completed a Master of Science in Food Science with a specialization in meat science at the University of Guelph in 2021. 

Ranim Elias is a master’s student in the Department of Animal Biosciences at the University of Guelph, under the supervision of Dr. Flavio Schenkel and Dr. Angela Canovas. Her research focuses on dairy cattle genetics, specifically examining direct and indirect survival traits in cattle. Beyond academia, Ranim has a strong passion for veterinary medicine. She holds multiple roles at the Ontario Veterinary College, including serving as an animal care attendant in the ICU, a surgical assistant for both small and large animals, and a laboratory technician in the reproductive lab. 

Guyue Renke is a master’s student in Animal Biosciences at the University of Guelph, working under Professor Niel Karrow. His research focuses on the immunomodulatory effects of β-glucans, particularly their role in zebrafish models under bacterial LPS challenge. His work integrates molecular biology and gene expression analysis to explore β-glucan’s potential in immune regulation. 

Ibtehaz Hussen Rony is currently pursuing an MSc in Animal Biosciences. He completed his bachelors in veterinary science in 2019 and then worked as a dairy consultant in Bangladesh. His research focuses on the mitigation of greenhouse gases in dairy cattle through genetic selection, specifically incorporating methane emissions into breeding goals. 

Tunde Thomas is an MSc student in Animal Biosciences and a veterinary doctor with over eight years of poultry practice.  

Kaiyue Zheng is a coursework master’s student in Animal Biosciences at the University of Guelph. She completed her undergraduate degree in Biology at McMaster University with a minor in Psychology. Her research background includes migratory bird phenology, and she has always been passionate about animals, which led her to this program. Currently, she is in Dr. Canovas’s lab, working on a project involving ram genetics. 

Information to attend: To join this seminar, please ensure you have downloaded the Microsoft Teams application to your computer or join the meeting online using the web browser version of Microsoft Teams. Please join the meeting with your microphone on mute and the camera turned off. After the presentation, you can unmute the microphone, and optionally turn on the camera, if you wish to ask a question. Alternatively, if you wish to pose your question in the chat function, the presenter will answer questions made through the chat.  

Teams link to attend: 

https://teams.microsoft.com/dl/launcher/launcher.html?url=%2F_%23%2Fl%2Fmeetup-join%2F19%3Ameeting_OGZiYjA2YTYtYzgzNi00NTA5LWFlZTctODQwNjhlMjcwY2Jj%40thread.v2%2F0%3Fcontext%3D%257b%2522Tid%2522%253a%2522be62a12b-2cad-49a1-a5fa-85f4f3156a7d%2522%252c%2522Oid%2522%253a%2522522551ba-0e93-4d61-8464-d782a9e7306d%2522%257d%26anon%3Dtrue&type=meetup-join&deeplinkId=3f779e13-87f8-4fa7-a039-00678ff7aa8c&directDl=true&msLaunch=true&enableMobilePage=true&suppressPrompt=true 

*Recordings of previous CGIL seminars are available at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAQ_5WCTMRQ6Gs35yROqGIQ/featured