School of Animal Biotechnology of Vet Varstity gets project worth Rs. 27 lacs

The School of Animal Biotechnology of GADVASU, has been sanctioned a research project by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, with outlay of Rs 27 Lacs. Dr. Ramneek, Director, School of Animal Biotechnology revealed that the project in collaboration with Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, College of Veterinary Science, Assam Agricultural University, Khanapara, Guwahati, Assam, aims towards characterizing fecundity genes in goats which may find application in improvement of germplasm of native goat breeds. Dr. J. S. Arora, Principal Investigator of the project said that reproductive traits are extremely important to the goat industry because moderate increase in litter size can lead to large profits. Traditional selection for improving litter size is difficult due to sex-limited nature and low heritability of the trait (5–10%). In addition, the lack of knowledge on the number of the genes controlling this trait and the possible gene interactions are the other limitations. As molecular genetics can overcome these limitations offering new opportunities for the improvement of reproductive traits, as it supplies tools to analyze genetic variability directly at the DNA level with the possibility of detecting the individual genes influencing the reproductive capability. This project aims to identify functional genes, clarify molecular mechanism of action and regulatory network and resort to more holistic approaches like genomic selection which can tremendously accelerate the goat improvement. Dr Ramneek informed that this is the 25th extramurally funded research project so far sanctioned by national agencies to School of Animal Biotechnology. He further elaborated that the School of Animal Biotechnology has made commendable achievement in the national scenario by securing a number of competitively earned research grants in the cutting edge research areas. Dr Simrat Sagar Singh, Dean Postgraduate Studies congratulated and while lauding the efforts of the scientist stated that the School has set up state of the art teaching and research facilities and is offering MVSc/MSc and PhD degrees in Biotechnology and has been started B.Tech (Biotechnology) programme from the current session.