Editorial

Abstract

University College Dublin (UCD) is delighted that ESDAR is returning to its campus for a second time for its annual meeting, we warmly welcome all delegates and participants. This is the 16th Annual Conference of the European Society for Domestic Animal Reproduction (ESDAR), your hosts are the Reproductive Biology Research Cluster and the UCD School of Veterinary Medicine. The conference is being held in the O’Reilly hall and the UCD Veterinary Science Centre on the main Befield campus of University College Dublin. This year ESDAR is delighted that the EU-AI vets are once again joining ESDAR for a joint conference that is running from Wednesday 29 August to Saturday 1 September 2012. Delegates have the option of registering for either the EU-AI Vet meeting or the ESDAR meeting or the combined meeting. The conference is aimed at scientists and veterinarians working in various fields of animal reproduction from all European countries and overseas. It deals with both basic and applied aspects of reproduction in domestic animal species. The meeting will provide a forum for presentation and discussion of state of the art in the field of veterinary reproduction in addition to stimulating interaction between researchers and veterinarians in practice. The local organizing committee and ESDAR board anticipate that the mix of plenary talks and workshops in addition to submitted presentations (oral and posters) will provide stimulating and exciting discussion across the diverse field of animal reproduction. In particular, we extend a very warm welcome to veterinary practitioners who we hope will find information applicable to them as they try to improve animal fertility on a day-to-day basis in their practices. The support for our sponsors is greatly acknowledged and at the time of going to press includes: Dairymaster, MSD, IMV, Minitüb, Proiser, Pfizer, Science Foundation Ireland and the Reproductive Biology Research Cluster in UCD in collaboration with Teagasc. On behalf of the Local Organising Committee, we thank all the participants – plenary speakers, workshop speakers and moderators, authors of submitted abstracts and the attending delegates. This issue of Reproduction in Domestic Animals contains papers from 6 plenary session lectures, abstracts from 24 workshop presentations and 32 oral communication presentations as well as over 170 poster presentations. None of the authors have any conflict of interest to declare.