IndiGau

Syllabus– General Studies 3(economy) 

Context

Recently the government of India, released ‘IndiGau’, India’s first Cattle Genomic Chip for the conservation of pure varieties of indigenous cattle breeds like Gir, Kankrej, Sahiwal, Ongole etc.

About IndiGau:

• This indigenous chip was developed by the concerted efforts of scientists of the National Institute of Animal Biotechnology (NAIB), Hyderabad, an autonomous institution under the aegis of the Department of Biotechnology.
• It is purely indigenous and the largest cattle chip in the world. 
• It has 11,496 markers (SNPs) more than that placed on 777K Illumina chips of US & UK breeds. 
• The Minister stated that this CHIP of our own indigenous cows is a great example of self-reliant India / “ATMA NIRBHAR BHARAT”. 

Benefits: 

• It will have practical utility in the Government’s schemes to achieve the goal of conservation of our own breeds with better characteristics.
• It will help towards doubling farmers’ income by 2022. 

To further the use of this chip in generating phenotypic and genotypic correlations, NIAB has entered into a collaborative agreement with National Dairy Development Board (NDDB).

• Since NDDB has a well-organized presence in the field for the collection of phenotypic records. 
• NIAB and NDDB complement each other to undertake this research for generating information for low-density SNP chips for any important trait detection, like high milk yield or heat tolerance etc. 
  This will eventually help in the elite bull selection and improvement of productivity characters of Indian cattle.

• NIAB has also entered into an MoU with private industry to generate capability within India for designing and making our own SNP chips.  
  • These may be very low-density SNP chips in the beginning and slowly this technology can be further strengthened for bigger chips, making India self-reliant in this field. 

Question- Write a short note on IndiGau.

PIB Link- https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1745479