Bareilly, Read. Agri trading company BL Agro on Thursday said its subsidiary Leeds Genetics has successfully transferred high-quality embryos of Gir cattle imported from Brazil into indigenous cows at its facility here. The company has claimed that the pregnancy success rate in the first batch was 60 percent, which is a record by industry standards. These embryos were obtained from the Brazilian company Fazenda Florêsia. These were prepared through ‘ovum pick-up in-vitro fertilization’ (OPU-IVF) technique. These have been taken from such cattle of Gir breed which have the capacity to give up to 40 liters of milk per day.
Ashish Khandelwal, managing director of BL Agro, told reporters that the pregnancy success rate among the 116 cattle involved in the first batch of embryo transfer was 60 per cent, which is a record in itself by industry standards. The average production of milk from indigenous cattle in India is about 4.5 liters per day. India is the largest milk producing country in the world, but there has been a problem of low productivity per animal for a long time. This work of embryo transfer was done at BL Kamdhenu Farms in Bareilly. The company’s ‘Centre of Excellence in Cattle Breeding and Dairy Technology’ is also located here, which is equipped with state-of-the-art IVF, Pathology and Genomics laboratories. The cows into which the embryos were transferred are of Gir, Sahiwal and Holstein Friesian breeds. Amanda Fantucci, a veterinary specialist at Fazenda Florêsia, who was overseeing the embryo transfer process, said the success rate in India has been much higher than in Brazil.
Leads Genetics is currently in talks with the governments of Bihar, Maharashtra, Punjab and Haryana. Its objective is to utilize this facility and establish breeding farms in collaboration with state governments to improve the indigenous cattle breeds of different states. The ‘Gir’ breed, known for its excellent milk production and disease resistance, is an important part of India’s indigenous cattle breed improvement program.
Story of Gir Cow reaching Brazil
The story of Gir breed cattle reaching Brazil is more than a century old. At that time the Maharaja of Baroda had gifted a Gir cow to a Brazilian family. Brazil then conducted decades of selective breeding research and developed a line that is now considered genetically superior in milk production. The same lineage has now returned to India through BL Agro’s embryo transfer programme.
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