New tech ensures birth of female calves
In line with the Aatmanirbhar Bharat mantra, NDDB Dairy Services (NDS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), has announced an indigenous technology for sex sorting bovine sperms that will ensure the birth of female calves. The first female calf from sex sorted semen dose produced at Alamadhi Semen Station was born in a farm near Chennai in October, 2020. This was the results of the field trials conducted by NDS in partnership with Jiva Sciences, a Bangalore-based R&D organization, to ascertain the performance of the product under actual field conditions are encouraging.
The ability to assure the birth of only female calves provides huge financial advantage to dairy farmers as the economic utility of a male calf is negligible. The current technologies for the sex sorting of bovine sperms was earlier proprietary to a few multi-national companies which made it difficult for dairy farmers to access the technology due to its high pricing.
Dilip Rath, Chairman, NDDB, informed that NDS had taken up the project to develop an indigenous technology for sex sorting bovine sperms a few years back with an objective to significantly bring down the cost of the sex sorted semen doses so that it becomes affordable for the dairy farmers in the country. This development would lead to large scale adoption of the technology. The sex sorted semen doses produced using the indigenous technology is reported to be meeting the industry quality and production benchmarks.
