Dairy is a large industry within Western Canada and one of the big threats to dairy is animals getting sick and typically a cause of this can be bacterial infections. These bacterial infections they can cause quite a lot of suffering for the cows they get inflammation they can be quite ill. In a very serious case they actually have to be culled or put down this also has a huge effect on the productivity of the dairy farms when their animals are sick they're not producing and this adds extra economic burden on the industry itself.

So here at the KPU Genetics Research Lab we are helping the industry to detect some of the bacteria that are causing illness in the dairy cows so we're using genetics tools to do this and we've come up with some new ways to do this more cost effectively to make it very economical for the farmers.

It's an improvement over traditional methods it allows earlier detection of this bacterial infection which is a bit improves health for dairy cows and allows the farmers to manage the herd better and to provide treatment to those cows so that they are not suffering the effects of those infections.

The KPU Genetics Research Lab is focused on using genetic tools to help various industry partners in health and agriculture to improve product production product consistency and various other types of research and development.

We're using genetics research here to meet some challenges particularly in the area of agriculture and we have other projects in the area of human health and just using our expertise and the equipment that we have here to contribute to the body of research.

For example we're working with several nurseries to help them with product development we're working with hop growers the way to increase some of the hop varieties that are available and we're working with sustainable agriculture to improve soil health.

I think it's great to have this here because it gives our students the experience in the field that is something that you just can't learn in the classroom. Being able to take what you learn in a classroom and then see it in the real world applying that knowledge you've gained and working on these projects like that's really eye-opening that experience is also what made me want to pursue research down the road in my career. I want to go and do graduate studies because I find this whole experience just so fun and rewarding.

So our goal is to continue to grow to form new industry partnerships create more opportunities for students to have this hands-on applied research experience so they can take that on beyond KPU into the future careers in education that they pursue .