Adisseo, a French animal nutrition company, has endowed a professorship and helped fund three poultry science research projects for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
The university did not disclose the amount of the endowment or how much the company contributed to the project.
Michael Kidd, professor of poultry nutrition, was named to the Adisseo Endowed Professorship in Global Sustainable Poultry Nutrition. The endowed position is a research professorship in the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the Division of Agriculture's research arm.
Kidd's research program will include poultry nutrition investigation in the areas of amino acids, energy, minerals and vitamins.
"This professorship encompasses a broad view of poultry nutrition. There are major challenges in feeding a growing world population, and this endowment takes a global view of sustainability in the poultry industry," Kidd said in a news release. "It's going to require collaboration overdrive. We need everyone working on a different piece of the broader puzzle to get it done."
The company also helped fund three research projects in the Division of Agriculture's Center of Excellence for Poultry Science.
Those projects are led by Walter Bottje, professor of poultry physiology; Byungwhi Kong, professor of poultry functional genomics and molecular virology; and Sami Dridi, professor of avian endocrinology and molecular genetics.
The memorandum of understanding to establish the endowed professorship was assigned in October 2018. A second agreement to expand collaborative research in poultry health and nutrition was signed in February 2019.
