After several incidents of residents being fleeced by dog breeders came to light, GADVASU has decided to conduct lab-based research to identify the purity of dog breeds. The research will be carried out on three popular dog breeds in Punjab—German Shepherd, Labrador, and Pug.
The expert said that the lockdown and travel restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic led to a rise in the unethical practice of selling mixed breeding and inbreeding among dogs. Due to a spurt in demand for some dog breeds, breeders indulged in such practices in order to sell them at a premium.
Dr JPS Gill, director of research said that the training has been sponsored by the project monitoring unit of Canine Research Centre and Networking (CRCN-GADVASU) under the DBT network research project titled ‘Parentage Determination and Cytogenetic Profiling in Dogs’.
The principal investigator Dr CS Mukhopadhyay, and the co-ordinators of the training Dr PP Dubey and Dr Anuj Tyagi mentioned that this training is focused on fundamental aspects of bioinformatics and biocomputational analyses.
Dr Mukhopadhyay said that lab-based research will help them create a DNA profiling of the particular breeds of dogs and their traits. “Purity of dog breed and its identification has always been an issue in the state. People always complain that they were given mongrels or mixed breed dogs. To begin with, lab tests will be conducted to check the three breeds of dogs popular in Punjab namely German Shepherd, Labrador, and Pug to identify their markers on the basis of DNA profiling, also known as DNA fingerprinting which establishes a genetic code for individual dogs of every breed.”
{{/usCountry}}Dr Mukhopadhyay said that lab-based research will help them create a DNA profiling of the particular breeds of dogs and their traits. “Purity of dog breed and its identification has always been an issue in the state. People always complain that they were given mongrels or mixed breed dogs. To begin with, lab tests will be conducted to check the three breeds of dogs popular in Punjab namely German Shepherd, Labrador, and Pug to identify their markers on the basis of DNA profiling, also known as DNA fingerprinting which establishes a genetic code for individual dogs of every breed.”
{{/usCountry}}A dog breeder from Mandi Ahmedgarh Ravinder Sharma said that the pandemic led to the unethical practice of breeding and mixed breeding.
“Some breeders cash on the emotions of people. Even after coming to know that the pet sold to them was a mixed breed, the owners do not desert it. In the case of inbreeding the pet suffers from infection and congenital disease,” said Dr Sharma.
He said that German Shepherd, Labrador, and Pug that rages between ₹5,000 to ₹20,000, were sold at a premium. German Shepherd pups were sold between ₹30,000 to ₹35,000.
Four-day training on bioinformatics held
The department has organised four-day e-training on bioinformatics in this regard.
This training was sponsored by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), a government-funded project on parentage determination in dogs and aimed to promote online learning and to impart proficiency in bioinformatics to trainees from diverse academic backgrounds.
As many as 100 trainees from 18 states and two international participants were apprised about the different aspects of molecular data analysis.
GADVASU’s vice-chancellor Inderjeet Singh emphasised that capacity building in bioinformatics and analysing parentage data using molecular methods is the need of the hour.
Dr Arun K Rawat, senior advisor to DBT emphasised on identification and exploring the possibility of canine-parentage based markers.