WPSA

At the Councillor’s Meeting during Paris' XXVI World Poultry Conference, the position of President of the World’s Poultry Science Association was officially passed from Dr Ning Yang of China to Dr Michèle Tixier-Boichard from France. Dr Tixier-Boichard, PhD, DVM, was born in Paris in 1959. She is married and has two children and one grand-daughter. She is a senior scientist at INRAE (the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment) where she has been working in animal genetics since 1985, mainly on chickens, after her PhD on pig breeding, also performed at INRAE.
She is a member of the World’s Poultry Science Association since 1989 and chaired the Working group ‘Breeding and Genetics’ of the European Federation between 1994 and 2002. With the French branch, she organised the European Symposium of Poultry Genetics in France in 2017.
She was elected Vice-President of the European Federation in 1998 and has been an elected Vice-president of the WPSA board from 2004 to 2016. She currently is vice-president of the French branch and is chairing the organizing committee of the 26th World’s Poultry Congress to be held in Paris in 2022. She supervised the production of the 6 minutes video celebrating the centenary of WPC in 2021.
Her personal interests include genetics of egg production traits, molecular characterisation of major genes and particularly feather colour genes, molecular assessment of genetic diversity in chickens, characterisation and conservation of local breeds. She published 138 papers in peer-reviewed journals and supervised 12 theses. Since February 2010 she is chairing the board of the French National Gene bank. She chairs since 2016 the French infrastructure of biological resource centres for agriculture research and coordinates its branch for domestic animals, CRB-Anim, created in 2012.

The World's Poultry Science Association is a long established and unique organization that strives to advance knowledge and understanding of all aspects of poultry science and the poultry industry. Its major role is to encourage, and help facilitate, liaison among research scientists and educators, and between those in research and education and those working in the many diverse sectors of the industry. As a non-profit making organization, it relies for its income almost entirely on membership subscriptions, although a number of poultry companies around the world provide generous sponsorship to help meet some of the production costs of the World's Poultry Science Journal.

With a large and truly international membership of 8,000, the organization's objectives are promoted in various ways. These range from high-profile international congresses and conferences to the many diverse meetings organized by WPSA national branches (of which there are about 80) and two federations of branches - in Europe and in the Asia-Pacific region. Within the Association there are many working groups and committees covering various aspects of poultry science and technology. Dedication to the spread of knowledge, education and training is ranked highly amongst the interests of WPSA members. All WPSA members can attend the regularly held World Congresses and regional conferences, together with many other meetings on various aspects of poultry production and poultry science. In return for their annual subscription, members also receive the World's Poultry Science Journal four times per year.

The World's Poultry Science Journal (WPSJ) has developed a high international reputation for its content, which covers virtually all aspects of production and science in the poultry industry. Collectively the reviews in the WPSJ provide an unrivalled reference source. Other contents include book reviews, book lists, news items on WPSA Branches, technical working groups and a calendar of events around the world, including education and training courses. The WPSJ is currently published four times each year. The address of the Editor is included under Officers of the Association.