Fluke targeted as Tyndall tackles farm diseases

On-the-spot testing for liver fluke will be at the heart of a project scheduled to bring rapid intervention methods against the disease to farmers within five years.

The new diagnostic toolkit is already christened Flukeless by its developers, Tyndall National Institute, based in Cork, one of Europe’s leading research centres in Information and Communications Technology, but now turning its attention to the agri-food field.

Tyndall recently were awarded an agriculture research grant of €878,883 from the Govern-ment’s Research Stimulus Fund for the Flukeless project, and is also taking part in a €900,000 research and development project on bovine respiratory disease (BRD), Ireland’s main cause of calf death.