News

Dalhousie University research in digital agriculture and poultry innovation reached a global audience at the 2026 World’s Poultry Congress in Toronto, which welcomed more than 2,100 delegates from 66 countries across academia, industry, government, producer organizations, and the wider poultry sector.

Dr. Suresh Raja delivered an opening-session keynote titled “From Birds to Bits: Listening to Life,” highlighting Dalhousie’s leadership at the intersection of poultry science, artificial intelligence, animal welfare, sustainability, and precision farming.

The keynote presented a connected digital poultry ecosystem spanning computer vision, bioacoustics, thermal imaging, multimodal artificial intelligence, digital twins, mobile applications, and satellite intelligence. Together, these technologies are being developed to help producers, veterinarians, and researchers detect welfare and environmental changes earlier, interpret them more clearly, and make more informed decisions.

A central message of the talk was that poultry systems are already generating meaningful biological signals through sound, movement, heat, feeding, resting, and social behaviour. Artificial intelligence can help connect and interpret those signals at a scale that would be impossible through periodic observation alone.

Dalhousie-developed platforms featured in the keynote included CluckTalk and Cluckify for poultry bioacoustics, CluckTwin and HenTwin for digital-twin-based flock monitoring, and satellite-enabled approaches for studying regional atmospheric patterns associated with poultry production.

The keynote also emphasized responsible and trustworthy artificial intelligence. Digital technologies should not replace producers, veterinarians, or farm managers. They should strengthen human judgement by showing what changed, why it matters, how confident the system is, and where attention may be needed.

The presentation demonstrated how Dalhousie is bringing together agriculture, computer science, entrepreneurship, and industry engagement to build practical research platforms for the future of poultry production.

Dalhousie’s broader presence at the congress included faculty participation and an industry-facing exhibition booth, supported by Brennan Gillis of Dal Partners and Mike McConkey, farm operations and programs manager. Their involvement helped connect university research with producers, companies, collaborators, and international stakeholders.

The congress provided a world-class platform to showcase Dalhousie’s growing contribution to poultry science and digital agriculture, while strengthening opportunities for international collaboration and industry impact.

“Artificial intelligence did not teach chickens how to communicate. It is helping us learn how to listen.”