The 26^th scientific meeting of the European Embryo Transfer Association (AETE) was held in September 10^th - 11^th , 2010, at Kuopio, Finland 

In this conference, associate professors, PhD students and various experts working the area of animal embryo transfer from 23 countries took part. The Association activity Report was presented by its President - S. Merton, who emphasized that in 2009 alone, Europe wide an amount of 114148 transfer-capable embryos were produced from farm animals alone, and from these, 1754 were obtained after using a sexed sperm.

The conference meeting was organized in 4 distinct scientific topics oral sessions:

1. Manipulations with sperm;  
2. Reproductive technologies;  
3. Cloning;   
4. Student session. 

Four different plenary lectures on the topics mentioned above were led by leading international recognized experts and 13 short oral presentations. Special interest was raised by the lecture of J. M. Dejarnette from US regarding the use of fluoro cytometry selected sexed sperm.

Additionally, two poster sessions were organized with more than 100 posters presented and two applied topic specific workshops:

1.  Freezing of embryos by vitrification;
2.  Non-invasive methods for evaluation of embryos quality were organized.

Owing to the ReProForce Project under 7FP of EU, Bulgaria has re-established again its partnership in AETE, as it was cancelled for some time due financial reasons. The scientific achievements of the IBIR - BAS were announced in this year’s Association meeting by 2 posters presented by prof. D. Kacheva and Assoc. prof. E. Kistanova:  

• Effect of Spirulina Platensis and Selenopiran on the ovary activity with respect to embryo production. Kistanova E., Kacheva D, Shumkov K., Abadjieva D., Borjaev G., Nevitov M., Shimkus A.  
•  Correlations between enzymes activity and parameters of boar semen. Georgiev B., Hansen P., Kacheva D., Taushanova P., Shumkov K., Abadjieva D., Kistanova E

The materials from the Meeting are published in the Congress Proceedings at (http://www.aete.eu/pdf_publication/29.pdf)

The participation in this scientific forum is of enormous significance for both the IBIR recognition improvement by presenting the Institute scientific achievements to the European scientific community as well as for acquiring new knowledge, new technology acquaintance and enduring the interpersonal professional connections.