India’s first cloned Gir calf ‘Ganga’ produced at National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI)

Current Affairs

  • National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI), Karnal, Haryana has produced India’s first cloned female calf “Ganga” of indigenous breed Gir to increase milk production, whose weight was 32 kg and it is growing well, which can produce more than 15 liters of milk per day.
  • This program was launched by National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI), Karnal in collaboration with Uttarakhand Livestock Development Board (ULDB), Dehradun.
  • The scientists claimed the research would prove to be a major milestone in the conservation of the indigenous breeds of cattle that were on the verge of extinction.
  • Overcoming the challenges in the cloning of cattle owing to certain practical and operational difficulties, scientists Dr Naresh Selokar, Dr Manoj Kumar Singh, Dr Ajay Pal Singh Aswal, Dr SS Lathwal, Dr Subhash Kumar Chand, Dr Ranjeet Verma, Dr Kartikey Patel and Dr MS Chauhan took two years to taste the success.
  • The project was started in 2021 by the NDRI in collaboration with Uttarakhand Livestock Development Board (ULDB), Dehradun, for the cloning of indigenous cows such as Gir, Sahiwal, and Red Shindi under the leadership of Dr Chauhan, the then director of the NDRI.
  • The scientists used hand-guided cloning technology which is an economical and efficient method of cloning in comparison to other technologies of the world.

Cloning:-

  • Cloning means creating another organism from one organism by asexual method, the clones produced by this method are physically and genetically identical to their parent. That is, cloning is the making of a copy of an organism.
  • With its help, incurable and genetic diseases can be cured by creating special tissues and organs. In the year 1997, for the first time in Britain, a sheep named ‘Dolly’ was cloned.
  • The National Dairy Research Institute has also cloned buffaloes named Mahima and Garima.

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