Dairy institute clones buffalo successfully

Indian scientists have successfully produced a calf through cloning, the world’s third. The day-old calf weighs 32 kg and is doing fine.

Indian scientists have successfully produced a calf through cloning, the world’s third. The day-old calf weighs 32 kg and is doing fine.

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Scientists at the Karnal-based National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) had cloned the world’s first buffalo calf in February 2009, which stayed alive for five days. A second calf was cloned in June last year, which has survived. The latest calf has been named Garima II.

Cloned buffaloes can provide India the chance to produce elite milch animals and double its milk yield, NDRI’s director A.K. Srivastava said.

The latest calf was born through a Caesarian operation carried out by a team of doctors from NDRI and Chaudhary Charan Singh Agricultural University (CCSHAU) Hisar.

Dolly the sheep, which became the iconic first mammal cloned from an adult cell, died in 2003. It is an embalmed museum piece now.

It takes several hundreds of attempts to a cloned a mammal and produce a living offspring.

The latest cloning puts India on the forefront of cutting-edge cloning technologies.