Applied research in poultry: a university perspective.

Applied research institutes in the poultry sector and university could have crossed benefits from establishing and developing links through shared research and pedagogical acts. On one side, applied research is defined as multidisciplinary with a mixing of several time scales and the need for additional human workload compared with basic research. On the other side, university teachers are involved in multiple activities which can be detrimental to their own research, since the priority is usually devoted to students. To cope with this major aim, academic staffs develop various pedagogical tools to enhance the learning process. Some of these approaches are described hereafter. Special emphasis was paid to “Problem based learning” and several of its constituents, as on-field inquiry, qualitative and quantitative literature review, systemic modelling and lab work. These different skills and methods applied within the poultry sector are shown as included in a triangle with the three following actors: private firms, applied research institutes and university. Moreover, these tools are articulated all along the curriculum both at the university and during practice training. From the authors experience, it seems that students strongly connected with the industry and/or the applied research sector have less difficulty to find a first consistent job within the private sector compared to more fundamental research oriented students. However, for historical reasons in France, few university curricula are strongly connected to the applied research sector. Several specificities of the poultry production chain are presented to persuade university staffs to improve their links with this sector. Efforts are proposed by the authors to reach a consistent employability level of the students through strengthened interactions between applied research institutes and university.