The importance of embryo transfer in dairy cattle?
In dairy cattle, embryo transfer is a method used to more effectively replicate and disseminate the genes of animals with high genetic potential. This method is applied to transfer the genes of cattle with high milk yield, disease resistance, and genetic value to other animals.
Here are the important aspects of embryo transfer in dairy cattle:
Genetic Progress and Improvement:
Embryo transfer ensures genetic progress by rapidly replicating the genes of genetically superior dairy cattle. This results in cattle with higher milk yield.
Genetic Diversity and Disease Resistance:
Embryo transfer can increase genetic diversity, allowing for the production of cattle more resistant to diseases.
Time and Energy Savings:
Achieving genetic improvement so quickly and effectively through natural means can take a lot of time. Embryo transfer accelerates this process, saving time and energy.
Faster Reproduction:
Embryo transfer involves placing an embryo taken from a genetically valuable cow into the womb of another cow. This allows animals carrying valuable genes to reproduce more quickly.
More Meat and Milk Production:
Genetically improved cattle obtained through embryo transfer can produce more meat and milk, which is economically advantageous.
Embryo Transfer Studies in the World?
Today, the application of embryo transfer (ET) is used as the most advanced biotechnological method for the improvement of breeds in all countries with developed livestock industries.
Using it together with genomic evaluation further increases the benefits obtained from embryo transfer applications. In countries that want to develop their livestock, embryo transfer applications are also widely used.
Embryo transfer studies first began in rabbits in the 1890s, and the first birth with ET in farm animals occurred in 1951. In Turkey, embryo transfer studies were conducted in rabbits in 1981, in mice in 1983, in sheep in 1984, and in cows in 1986. Commercial ET in cattle breeding started in the early 1970s in the USA.
Burdur Mehmet Akif Ersoy University Embryo Studies?
With the industrialization of Embryo Transfer technology, ET projects have been carried out in our country under the leadership of public institutions. Indeed, the Presidency Strategy and Budget Office, the Council of Higher Education, and the Regional Development Focused Specialization Project established the first application and research center within the university to disseminate ET technology, known as GETEM.
The donor animal population enterprise of GETEM was established on our university campus in 2018. For this, 90 heifers imported from Germany were transferred with frozen-thawed Holstein embryos imported from America. The 42 heifers with high TPI (total performance index) born as a result of these applications formed the first donor population of GETEM (Figure 1).
From the creation of this donor population, approximately 500 embryos have been produced until October 2023. Over 300 ETs have been performed during the same periods, and 110 pregnancies have been obtained from these transfers.
With these studies, significant contributions are made to the country's sperm needs.
In Turkey, the Ministry of Agriculture granted permission for the import of 3,045,405 doses of sperm in 2022. In the same year, the private sector produced 1,817,083 doses and the public sector produced 1,023,285 doses of sperm. As a result of these studies, 5 bulls with high TPI were brought to a private Bull station for the production of frozen sperm, and approximately 300 thousand doses of frozen sperm have been produced from these bulls to date. Indeed, as in the rest of the world, the most effective widespread impact of ET technology is to raise bull candidates for the production of frozen bull sperm.
Courses are opened within our research center to meet the need for qualified technical personnel.
Additionally, a course is organized within GETEM for the "Embryo Production Transfer in Cattle" certificate, which is required for meeting the need for qualified technical personnel in the field of embryo transfer and for the legal execution of this application.
GETEM, with its existing R&D memory and technical infrastructure, has adopted the principle of serving our country's breeders by contributing to the dissemination of embryo transfer studies in cattle and meeting the need for high-yield breeding animals.