The HoloFood project final year conference:
Understanding host-microbiota interactions is increasingly recognised as an essential step to improve the efficacy and efficiency of applied biological processes within medicine, agriculture and nature conservation. As such, the joint study of eukaryotic hosts and their associated microbial communities using molecular tools, namely hologenomics, holds the promise to contribute towards addressing some of the global challenges in the 21st Century.
The 1st Applied HoloGenomics conference aimed to highlight key discoveries and novel approaches that aim at understanding the interactions of plant and animal hosts with their associated microbial communities, which could be directly or potentially applied into management and practice.
In brief this conference aimed to cover these three key questions:
- What are the current uses of hologenomics?
- What societal and industrial needs of the 21st century could be addressed through hologenomic approaches?
- How can hologenomics be used to link basic and applied research questions?
The program was designed to cover both a wide range of fundamental and applied themes within hologenomics research, and incorporate panel discussions about the future possibilities and needs of industry and society. We were pleased to welcome guest speakers at the forefront of their fields, working within human health, agrisciences and more, whether representing academia or industry.
The 1st Applied HoloGenomics Conference was an overall success, with over 130 in person participants and 90 virtual attendees from across the world!
Local organisers, the University of the Basque Country (EHU/UPV) together with support from the University of Copenhagen held the conference in the impressive Palacio Euskalduna, Bilbao, Spain.
The conference themes ranged from Human Health, Agriscience, Aquaculture and Food production, Biodiversity and Conservation, Methodological Breakthroughs and the Industry-Academia relationship. The schedule included a combination of keynote invited speakers and abstract submission talks, which offered a dynamic selection of the current state-of the art in research and application of host-microbiota research.
Moreover, there were 50 poster presenters, many attending an international conference for the first time. The event schedule allowed for plenty of time for networking and socialising between attendees.
Participants from across the world took part in AHC 2022. In red country affiliations of participants for virtual attendance, in blue affiliations for in person attendees.
Feedback from participants was overall very positive! This is a one-word description from participants as part of a follow-up survey to the conference.
This project has received funding from the European Unionʼs Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 817729.
