This calf is no cloned feat

KARNAL: In a significant achievement, scientists at National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) here have cloned a female calf from a somatic (other than reproductive) cell extracted from buffalo's urine. "This is probably first case in the world across the species, in which somatic cells has been isolated from urine and cloned calf has been produced," said Dr M S Chauhan, a scientist involved in the project.
Named Apurva, it is the tenth cloned calf in the NDRI, since the institute produced world's first cloned buffalo calf in 2009. Three of the 10 cloned calves had died.
Dr Chauhan told the TOI that like the previous cases, Apurva has also been produced using the 'hand-guided cloning technique' but adopting a new aspect of it. In this case, the donor cell was isolated from urine of elite female murrah buffalo in NDRI's livestock farm, which produced 3,494 kg milk in lactation period of 471 days, during her third lactation. Murrah, which is also known as black beauty, is popular for high yield of milk.
Apurva was born by normal parturition or delivery, and its weight at the time was around 37 kg. The newborn calf is in good health.
Congratulating the researchers, director general of Indian Council of Agricultural Research Dr S Ayyappan said that the new achievement of producing cloned calf from adult lactating animals by hand-guided cloning technique will facilitate faster multiplication of elite genetic resource. "It will help us in facing the challenges of increasing demands of milk due to growing human population," he said.
NDRI director Dr A K Srivastava emphasized that this technology could go a long way in multiplying the number of best milch buffaloes in India. "The world's largest population of buffaloes is in India and they contribute about 55% of the total milk production in the country. However, there is an urgent need to enhance the population of these elite buffaloes," he added.
The researchers at NDRI had produced the world's first cloned buffalo in 2009 through advanced hand-guided cloning technique in which the donor cell was used from the foetus and was an advanced modification of the "conventional cloning technique".
Though, the clone could survive for just six days and the second clone which became the first surviving clone of buffalo. It died two years later in 2011 due to some health aliments. Garmia, which was the third cloned buffalo born on August 22, 2010, not only survived but also delivered a calf in 2013.