IndiGau

IndiGau

Subject: Science and Technology

Context: Dr Jitendra Singh today released “IndiGau’, India’s first Cattle Genomic Chip for the conservation of pure varieties of indigenous cattle breeds like, Gir, Kankrej, Sahiwal, Ongole etc.

Concept:

• “IndiGau’, India’s first Cattle Genomic Chip for the conservation of pure varieties of indigenous cattle breeds like, Gir, Kankrej, Sahiwal, Ongole etc.
• This indigenous chip was developed by the concerted efforts of scientists of National Institute of Animal Biotechnology (NAIB), Hyderabad, an autonomous institution under the aegis of the Department of Biotechnology.
• IndiGau is purely indigenous and the largest cattle chip of the world.
• Departments like DBT and NIAB are contributing to the welfare and income augmentation of farmers.
• NIAB has entered into a MoU with private industry to generate capability within India for designing and making our own SNP chips.
• This chip will have practical utility in the Governments schemes to achieve the goal of conservation of our own breeds with better characters and help towards doubling of farmers’ income by 2022

Advantages of chip

• The use of this chip is for generating phenotypic and genotypic correlations, NIAB has entered into a collaborative agreement with National Dairy Development Board (NDDB).
• NDDB has well organized presence in the field for collection of phenotypic record, 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 elite bull selection and improvement of productivity characters of Indian cattle.