Lallemand Animal Nutrition, North America, recently opened a Center of Excellence in Ruminant Research inside the Biotechnological Research Institute (BRI) developed exclusively to the research and development of next generation probiotics and molecular techniques for monitoring their effect upon the rumen microbial ecosystem.

BRI, located in Montreal, is owned and operated by the government of Canada. It provides turn-key laboratory space, facilities, and unique services to commercial companies involved in biotechnical research and development. In so doing, it promotes synergy with innovative biotechnology enterprises and provides state-of-the-art equipment and services to its clientele. In the field of life sciences, the expertise forms a continuum that includes functional product discovery, bioprocess development and scale-up.

BRI hosts more than 30 Lallemand researchers with multidisciplinary programs in five sectors: Animal Nutrition, Human Health, Fermented Beverages, Bakery and Ethanol technology. This allows collaboration and cross fertilization of knowledge, experience and expertise between each group.

Dr. Nicola Walker joined the Lallemand Animal Nutrition, North America team with a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland. She brings proven expertise in anaerobic and aerobic microbiology, molecular biology and protein biochemistry. She has conducted research in several different aspects of rumen microbiology at the Rowett Research Institute in Scotland, and in New Zealand dairy for three years. She then moved to Clermont-Ferrand, France and spent two years searching for new probiotic yeast strains which had positive effects on rumen fermentation and overall animal health. In 2007 she  moved to Montreal to set up a new Lallemand Animal Nutrition Center of Excellence at BRI.

In the case of animal nutrition, Lallemand provides optimized microbial solutions from silage inoculants to digestive enhancers with a high level of understanding of their mechanism of action. With decades of experience in isolating and identifying strains, Lallemand benefits from an extensive bank of thousands of microbial strains isolated from the natural environment that can be screened for their ability to modify and improve ruminal fermentation, host health and productivity. Combining both classical microbiology (cultivation, enumeration, in vitro fermentation, biochemical assays) and high tech molecular techniques (DNA fingerprinting, microarray, real time PCR) their effect on the microbial ecology of the rumen can be evaluated and their modes of action determined.