5^th February, 2015, Karnal

Dr. A. K. Srivastava, Director, ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal informed that another female cloned calf named ‘APURVA’ produced through the ‘Hand-guided Cloning Technique’ was born on February 5, 2015. The calf was born by normal parturition and its weight at the time of birth was around 37 kg. The newborn calf is keeping in good health. The new born calf is clone of an elite Murrah buffalo (MU-5345) of NDRI Livestock Farm. Earlier Lalima was produced from the same buffalo.  

Dr. S. Ayyappan, Secretary, DARE and Director General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi congratulated the team and said that this new achievement of producing cloned calf from adult lactating animals by “Hand-guided Cloning” technique will facilitate faster multiplication of elite germplasm and help us to face the challenges of increasing demands of milk due to growing human population.

The donor cell was isolated from urine an excretory material of elite female Murrah buffalo, which produced 2713 kg milk in standard lactation period of 305 days and 3494 kg in total lactation period of 471 days, during her 3rd lactation. To our knowledge this is the first report in the world across the species in which somatic cells has been isolated from urine and cloned calf has been produced.  

The team of the scientists involved in the production of this cloned calf, are Dr. S.K. Singla, Dr. M.S. Chauhan, Dr. R.S. Manik, Dr. P. Palta, Dr. S.S. Lathwal, Mr. Pankaj, Mr. Anuj Raja and Mr. Amol Sahare.

(Source: ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal)