The Egg Industry Center at Iowa State University awarded four grants totaling over $395K as part of its 2023 EIC Research Grant Program award cycle. Award winners will be starting work in the following funded research areas:

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI)

• This project will use data from existing wild bird flyover tools and on-farm biosecurity practices to take a deeper dive into identifying the combination of key risk factors that are more predictive of HPAI positive detection on a commercial layer farm. The goal is to create web-based tools providing more accurate and actionable risk scores for the U.S. commercial poultry industry.

Infectious Coryza (IC)

• Two awards were given to study coryza. The goals are to understand the modern poultry industry practices that most contribute to the rapid spread of Infectious Coryza and to develop a live vector-delivered vaccine to protect layer chickens against infection.

Nest utilization

• This project will seek to determine how laying hens utilize nest resources provided within cage-free systems to inform decision-making about minimum space requirements in animal welfare guidelines and audit tools.

The Egg Industry Center grant program funds research to help answer industry challenges through scientifically based solutions. The center has funded 40 research projects at 14 universities totaling over $2.9 million. Completed research has helped to advance knowledge in virus transmission, genetic resistance, animal welfare challenges, new market development and more.

For more information about partnering with the Egg Industry Center to support research funding, or to find more information on completed and on-going research, visit the center's research webpage.