CHENNAI: Meenesh Shah, National Dairy Development Board chairman, said large-scale commercial sale of sex-sorted semen for bovine produced using indigenous technology will be launched in two months. He inspected the Alamadhi Semen Station near Red Hills established by NDDB Dairy Services, a owned subsidiary of NDDB.
“The station has the capacity to produce 10 lakh sex-sorted semen doses annually. These doses, derived from high-quality genetic bulls, will be sold to dairy farmers at a 66% subsidy,” he told reporters.
A trial run of the indigenous technology is under way from March and 5,000 doses of sex-sorted bovine semen have been produced till date. “After the review of trial results, the technology can be dedicated to the nation. The calving rate is expected to be between 40 and 42%,” Shah said.
Spread over 358 acres, Alamadhi semen station has been in operation since May 2015. The station has capacity to produce one crore doses of frozen semen per annum. It houses 300 bulls of 25 breeds of high genetic merit at its premises in a hygienic bio-secured environment for production of disease-free semen.
Fourteen indigenous breeds are maintained at the station. With the high genetic merit semen, the daily milk potential of breeds is about fifteen litres and that of exotic breeds ranges between 25-50 litres.