The Ongole breed of cattle, which thrived in the fertile plains between the rivers Musi and Paleru in Prakasam district for centuries, had been on the verge of extinction in the land of its origin owing to various reasons, including farmers replacing the Ongole bull with tractors for agriculture.
However, better days are in the offing for the indigenous breed with State-owned Cattle Breeding Farm at Chadalawada stepping in to produce this breed of cattle using In-vitro fertilization-embryo transfer (IVF-ET) technology. A pilot taken up by the farm under the Rashtriya Gokul Mission has paid off with a surrogate cow delivering a Ongole breed calf in the field level on September 12. Surrogacy calves had hitherto been bred mostly in labs.
‘’We have successfully taken the advanced reproductive technology to farmers for the first time for faster multiplication of the Ongole breed superior germplasm,” says deputy director of the farm B. Ravi. Showing the surrogate cow and the Ongole breed calf it delivered at Sri Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy Goshala at Bollapalli village near Martur, he told The Hindu, “So far, 10 veterinarians have been trained on IVF-ET, and we are getting positive results.”
