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Army's pride, little Gaurav, takes a novel birth

Bindu Shajan Perappadan

The new process leads to several high quality offspring in a single year

NEW ARRIVAL: Lt. Gen. S. Pattabhiraman, Vice Chief of Army, with the Army Pride (Gaurav) and his mother at Army's Breeding Farm in Babugarh.

BABUGARH (UTTAR PRADESH): In a first for the Indian Army, its Equine Breeding Stud here has become the only unit in the country to have successfully bred an embryo-transferred foal.

Army Pride Gaurav, christened thus here on Thursday, is the first foal to have been born - on February 10 -- using the highly sophisticated Equine Embryo Transfer Technology (ETT).

"Primarily a research project sanctioned by the Ministry of Science and Technology in December 2003, what we did under the ETT programme was to cross a superior quality male with female, who was pre-treated with hormones to produce multiple eggs thus creating several potential embryos after mating. These embryos, after a specified period of time, are flushed out from the mother horse and attached to one or more surrogate mares that later give birth. The advantage of the process is that we get several high quality offspring in a single year without `occupying' the primary breeding mare,'' said principle scientist of the project Devender Kumar, who has already achieved 11 pregnancies in his animals and has another successful birth recorded on February 27 using the ETT technique.

A highly specialised technique, the ETT, according to scientists working in the area, has to be carried out under strictly controlled environment to protect the embryo against any possible infections or damage.

"ETT work encompasses the development of techniques relating to super ovulation, collection, culturing and transfer of embryos in the recipient mares and also use of cryo-preserving techniques. The most crucial phase in the process of development is the transfer of the flushed growing embryo to the surrogate mother. Contact with air at any point of time exposes the embryo to the possibility of catching infections that can prove fatal,'' added Lt. Col. Kumar.

The project, costing an estimated Rs. 77.06 lakhs, was conducted at a specially built world-class laboratory in Babugarh. Speaking about the several possibilities that this successful breeding programme has opened up for the Army, Col. S. C. Gatt posted in Babugarh said: "With collection of so many embryos and achieving these many pregnancies at one time, a new field of embryo bio-technology for use in horses has taken birth in India. Since embryo is the basis of development of life the advances in the field will open the way for production of world-class horses.''

Meanwhile, the Equine Breeding Stud at Babugarh, one of the oldest horse-breeding studs of the country, is also hosting a two-day national symposium beginning this Thursday on Application of Recent Bio-Technological Advances in Equine Reproduction. The breeding centre has also been credited with starting work on freezing of equine semen in 2004 and in a short span of one-year officials here boasts about having developed and standardised the technology for use.

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