May 15, 2023: President Murmu witnesses India's first cloned cow. Here is all the information you need on cloning technology!
President Droupadi Murmu met with "Ganga," India's first cloned Gir cow, during a recent visit to the National Dairy Research Institute in Karnal, Haryana.
'Ganga' was born at the institute on March 16 this year, and the weight of the calf at the time of birth was 32 kilograms. Notably, NDRI also produced the world's first cloned buffalo in 2009.
The Scientific Basis of the Cloning process:
The scientists first procured eggs from live cows and allowed them to develop for 24 hours in a lab setting. They then gathered somatic cells from better cows, such as skin and muscle cells, and transferred their nucleus into an egg cell that had been enucleated and had its genetic material extracted. Finally, the blastocysts were implanted into surrogate cows, who carried the embryos to term and gave birth to the cloned Gir calf.
On March 16, Ganga was born at the hospital. Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), which involves substituting the genetic material in an egg cell for genetic material from another cell, was used to carry out the cloning.
Benefits of Cattle Cloning:
1. The rapid reproduction of superior animals and the preservation of endangered breeds may both be facilitated through animal cloning.
2. Its objective is to enhance the number of national breeds. In 2021, the NDRI-Karnal and the Uttarakhand Livestock Development Board (ULDB), Dehradun, started working on the cloning of native cows like Gir, Sahiwal, and Red Shindi.
3. India will be able to produce more milk if it has more high-quality cattle. Notably, the researchers claim that normal and cloned cattle are both capable of producing the same amount of milk.
4. Gir cows, a native breed of Gujarat, are favoured by dairy farmers because of their kind disposition, high-quality milk, resilience to stress, and resistance to various tropical diseases.
5. The new advances in the Indian dairy industry would be ushered in by the indigenous technique created.
