A major milestone from the conservation angle, Kerala Livestock Development Board’s initiative can produce more than 20 calves every year using surrogates that can be of any breed.

With its dark eyes and brown coat Abhimanyu may look like any other calf, but what makes it unique is the way it was born. The calf is the result of a major research breakthrough, produced from a frozen IVF (in vitro fertilisation) embryo as part of the efforts to conserve the indigenous Vechur breed by the Kerala Livestock Development Board (KLDB).

A team of researchers could successfully establish the pregnancy in a surrogate and the calf was born in September at the Mattupetty farm, implemented under the Rashtriya Gokul Mission. Though they could produce calves using fresh IVF embryos earlier, it is for the first time a calf was produced with frozen IVF embryo.Cryopreserved
“The embryo used to produce the calf was frozen (cryopreserved) in liquid nitrogen at 200 degrees below zero for nearly two months before it was revived and transferred into a surrogate. It’s for the first time in the country a Vechur cow was produced through the process,” J. Anoop, Deputy General Manager, KLDB, told to media.

The technique is employed for the production of genetically superior indigenous breeds and researchers at the farm have been trying to produce Vechur and Sahiwal calves since 2020.