The XI International Symposium on Digestive Physiology of Pigs (DPP) took place in Montbrio del Camp, Costa Daurada, Spain from May 20th to the 22th 2009. This conference had about 300 participants mainly from Spain but also from Canada, BENELUX, Germany, France and Italy. The main focus of this Symposium was a review on the latest advances in the field of pig digestive physiology, providing the basis for future research.

A broad spectrum of topics on pig physiology, e.g. glucose absorption, performance, gut histology, were covered in this conference. The DPP meeting is – apart from the scientific programme - also a good place to meet people from governmental organizations, universities and companies.

The BIOMIN team was represented by Alexander Hainz (Area manager Southern Europe), Barbara Rüel (Technical Manager) Viviana Klose (R&D Project Manager), Pierre Desmarais (General Manager BIOMIN Canada) and Anja Ganner (R&D Project Manager). Viviana Klose presented the poster “Selection of potential probiotic strains for competitive exclusion treatment in pork production” and Anja Ganner gave two poster presentations about her yeast research projects: “Health benefits of yeast cell wall components: in vitro and in vivo investigation” and “Ex vivo effect of yeast beta-glucan on lymphocyte viability and plasma IL-18 in weaning piglets”.

Culinary dinners with red wine, paella and seafood as well as a sightseeing tour to the Romanic areas from Tarragona completed a nice conference programme.