BAIF lab may prove a boon to dairy industry

pune: the indian dairy industry has faced a severe shortage of exotic cattle breeds since the outbreak of the mad-cow disease in europe in 1997. city-based baif development research foundation''s rs 2 crore, state-of-the-art, embryo-transfer laboratory will go a long way towards tiding over the shortage. the warje-based laboratory is to be inaugurated by dr r chidambaram, principal scientific adviser, government of india, on february 14.it may be recalled that livestock had to be killed in the thousands in europe due to the outbreak of the disease. the government of india too had banned the import of semen to prevent the disease from entering the country. describing the extent of the shortage caused by these developments, baif''s project in-charge dr s b gokhale says that presently only 1,350 bulls of exotic breeds are available for breeding, per year, as compared to the requirement of 5,370 bulls. moreover, the annual production of semen doses is barely 30 million as compared to the demand of 90 million. in order to meet the shortfall, the warje project envisages producing better quality bulls from the top 10 to 20 per cent of the elite cows present in the country. "we have about 100 jersey and an equal number of holspein fresian (hf) cows, brought from denmark and canada, at our centre," gokhale he said. the idea is to produce superior quality breeding bulls, which in turn, will be able to replace the old ones within a few years from now. "farmers will then be able to procure semen from these animals locally to breed their cows," he explained, adding that the project, once implemented, is expected to give a fillip to animal husbandry in the entire region. according to baif foundation president dr n g hegde, in addition to semen freezing, the new laboratory will cater to about a million doses of frozen semen to various government and non-government agencies every year. while the technology information forecasting assessment council (tifac) of the ministry of science and technology has given a grant of rs one crore to baif, the remaining amount has been raised internally, dr gokhale explained. dr hegde says similar attempts of embryo transfer have been made in other places of the country for production of quality female calves. "all these required a high-cost in technology which may not have had immediate applications," he said. baif, however, is emphasising on the production of elite breeding bulls, besides genetic conservation of indigenous breeds, he claims. dr gokhale further adds that institutions which attempted embryonic transfer paid more heed to the production of superior cows for greater milk production. "unfortunately, this didn''t prove to be too successful as the cost of the producing such cows was very high."