Aimed at the conservation of pure varieties of indigenous cattle breeds like Gir, Kankrej, Sahiwal and Ongole, the Centre introduced “IndiGau’, India’s first Cattle Genomic Chip.
IndiGau is purely indigenous and the largest cattle chip of the world with 11,496 markers. Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science and Technology Jitendra Singh released “IndiGau’.
Scientists of National Institute of Animal Biotechnology (NAIB), Hyderabad, an autonomous institution under the aegis of the Department of Biotechnology, developed this indigenous chip.
The chip has 11,496 markers (SNPs) more than that placed on 777K Illumina chip of US and UK breeds. The Minister said that the CHIP was a great example of self-reliant India / “ATMA NIRBHAR BHARAT”. The chip will have practical utility in the Governments schemes to achieve the goal of conservation of India’s own breeds with better characters and help towards doubling of farmers’ income by 2022.
NIAB has also entered into a 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.
