Rhodimet Research Grant awarded

The research grant represents a total amount of €250,000 which is allocated to support proposals of one–to-two years of research and will be divided between basic and applied research grants.

Since the first launch of the Rhodimet Research Grant in 2006, fourteen research programs on sulphur amino acid and methionine sources have been granted by Adisseo.

More than ten scientific papers have been published in peer-review journals further demonstrating the quality of the scientific work.

In November 2011 Adisseo launched a new campaign to support research programs for the next two years (2012-2014).

As a result, 14 research proposals were submitted before the deadline. An external committee involving international scientists and nutritionists from companies selected the best projects.

The ranking criteria ranged from scientific interest and originality to research description and method used.

For this 2012-2014 campaign three research dossiers were awarded according to these criteria and the laureates were presented by Drs Véronique Legrand-Defretin (R&D Nutrition Director, Adisseo) and Yves Mercier (Methionine research Manager):

• Dr Sammy Aggrey (University of Georgia, Athens, USA) for “Delineation of molecular control mechanisms of methionine in broiler chickens”;

• Prof Zhengfeng Fang (Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, China) for “Increasing consumption of methionine or its precursor is promising to promote milk synthesis and milk methionine level” and,

• Dr Wei Zhai (Mississippi State University, USA) for “Effects of dietary methionine on meat quality and protein expression in skeletal muscle tissue of broilers”.

The new results obtained during these two years projects will be shared with the methionine scientific community during the next Advancia meetings.