The 3rd Young Scholars Forum and the 7th Bellwether Development Program Academic and Industry Conference was held in Yangzhou on May 16-17, 2026. Over 300 participants from more than 50 institutions across 20 provinces attended. The program included 40 oral presentations, 74 posters, and a teaching exchange session for the Sheep and Goat Production course. Topics ranged across germplasm innovation, precision nutrition, disease prevention, and microbiomes.

This special column of Animal Research Perspectives collects a selection of work presented at the conference. The abstracts cover several broad areas. In nutritional regulation and meat quality, studies examined alternative feedstuffs such as grape pomace and sesbania hay in sheep diets, compared different selenium sources, and explored the biochemical basis of flavor differences between breeds, using metabolomics, metagenomics, and lipidomics. In rumen ecology, one paper tracked the seasonal dynamics of microbial communities in grazing Mongolian sheep, showing how forage availability drives microbial succession across the year. In reproductive physiology, two papers addressed the testicular toxicity of polystyrene microplastics and the role of IGF1 in Leydig cell proliferation and extracellular matrix remodeling in Tibetan sheep.

Classical production questions are now being revisited with transcriptomics, metabolomics, metagenomics, and single-cell resolution. The tools have changed and so have the depth of the answers. There is also growing attention to sustainability, including local feed resources, environmental pollutants, and seasonal adaptation.

The annual meeting, now in its seventh year under the Bellwether Development Program, has become a regular venue for young scientists to present their work and engage with industry partners. We thank the Sheep and Goat Branch of CAAV and the Bellwether Development Program Alliance for their continued support, and the editors of Animal Research Perspectives for making this special column possible. Most of all, we thank the authors and reviewers for their time and care.