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Union Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh released “IndiGau’, India’s first Cattle Genomic Chip for the conservation of pure varieties of indigenous cattle breeds like Gir, Kankrej, Sahiwal, Ongole etc.

Highlights

• IndiGau is purely indigenous and the largest cattle chip of the world with 11,496 markers
• The Chip to achieve the goal of conservation of our own breeds with better characters and help towards doubling of farmers’ income by 2022
• This chip will have practical utility in the Governments schemes to achieve the goal of conservation of our own breeds with better characters and help towards doubling of farmers’ income by 2022. 
• To further the use of this chip in generating phenotypic and genotypic correlations, NIAB has entered into a collaborative agreement with National Dairy Development Board (NDDB). 
• 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. 

Significance

• Since NDDB has well organized presence in the field for collection of phenotypic record, NIAB and NDDB complement each other to undertake this research for generating information for low density SNP chip for any important trait detection, like high milk yield or heat tolerance etc. 
• This will eventually help in elite bull selection and improvement of productivity characters of Indian cattle.

Source: PIB