July 17, 2006

Indian embryo transfer technology improves milk production

Steadily decreasing milk production, which once plagued India's dairy industry, is fast fading into history as more than 200,000 small-scale farmers in the country partake in the 'White Revolution'.

Farmers can now look forward to enhanced milk output from genetically superior cattle, using embryo transfer technology (ET) from a research project conducted by the BAIF Development Research Centre on 'Genetic Improvement of Rural Dairy Livestock for Sustainable Livelihood'.

The technology involves improving production through artificial insemination-embryos from high milk-yielding cows and bulls of exotic and indigenous breeds (donors) were retrieved and artificially transferred to the uterus of low-producing cows (recipients).

Each bull from such a donor can yield up to 15,000 cows, each giving roughly 400 litres a day. The technology also leads to production of up to six embryos a year instead of one, increasing the usage of the cow.

This can enable the farmers to improve their herd and increase milk production by at least 50 percent, said project co-ordinator S.B Gokhale.

Since the project started, in early 2001, 74 elite calves are already in production and over 38,000 semen doses have been collected.

The project is also creating awareness among farmers through livestock development institutes from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh.

The project was funded by India's Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology and was conducted at BAIF's Central Research Station at Uralikanchan.