IndiGau has 11,496 markers (SNPs) of more than that placed on 777K Illumina chip of the US and the UK breeds
Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; Minister of State (Independent Charge) Earth Sciences; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh released ’IndiGau’, India’s first Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) based chip for the conservation of pure varieties of indigenous cattle breeds like, Gir, Kankrej, Sahiwal, Ongole etc.
The indigenous chip was developed by the concerted efforts of scientists of the National Institute of Animal Biotechnology (NAIB), Hyderabad, an autonomous institution under the aegis of the Department of Biotechnology. On this occasion, Dr Renu Swarup, Secretary, DBT, Senior scientists of NIAB and senior officials of DBT were present.
Dr Jitendra Singh said that IndiGau is purely indigenous and the largest cattle chip in the world. It has 11,496 markers (SNPs) of more than that placed on 777K Illumina chip of the US and the UK breeds.
Dr Swarup informed that DBT is looking forward to implementing this technology in the field with the help of other agencies like National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying (DAHDF), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) etc. To further the use of this chip in generating phenotypic and genotypic correlations, NIAB has entered into a collaborative agreement with National Dairy Development Board (NDDB).
NDDB has a well-organised presence in the field for the collection of phenotypic records, NIAB and NDDB complement each other to undertake this research for generating information for low-density SNP chip for any important trait detection, like high milk yield or heat tolerance etc. This will eventually help in the elite bull selection and improvement of productivity characters of Indian cattle.
NIAB has also entered into an MoU with private industry to generate capability within India for designing and making our SNP chips. These may be very low-density SNP chips in the beginning and slowly this technology can be further strengthened for bigger chips, making India self-reliant in this field.
