"India's first cloned Gir female calf named 'Ganga' weighing 32 kg was born and is developing well under a project by National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal to work on cloning of indigenous cow breeds such as Gir and Sahiwal," the NDRI said in a release.
Indigenous cow breeds like Gir, Sahiwal, Tharparkar, and Red-Sindhi are critical to milk production and the expansion of the Indian dairy industry.
"We cloned the calf from a Gir breed cow that was producing 15 litres of milk every day. We have started cloning the high-yield cows using the cloning process as per Prime Minister Narendra Modi's directives to boost milk supply," stated Dr Manmohan Singh Chauhan, Vice Chancellor of GB Pant Agricultural University.
He was the NDRI's director when the NDRI began work on cloning high-yielding desi breeds like Gir, Red Sindhi, and Sahiwal breeds in 2021. The National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI), Karnal, initiated the scheme in partnership with the Uttarakhand Livestock Development Board (ULDB), Dehradun.
Gir cattle are well-known for their endurance to stress and resistance to many tropical diseases, according to NDRI chief Dr Dheer Aibgh. "Gir cattle are also highly popular and have been sent to Brazil, the United States, Mexico, and Venezuela for zebu cow development," he added.
For almost two years, a team of scientists led by Dr. Naresh Selokar, Manoj Kumar Singh, Ajay Aswal, SS Lathwal, Subhash Kumar, Ranjeet Verma, Kartikey Patel, and MS Chauhan has been striving to create an indigenous technology for producing cloned cattle.
Oocytes are extracted from live animals using ultrasound-guided needles and developed for 24 hours under regulated conditions to clone the Gir.
The somatic cells of elite cows serve as donor genomes, which are united with OPU-derived enucleated oocytes. The developing blastocysts are put into recipient mothers after chemical activation and in-vitro culture to deliver the Resultant calf.
