Effectiveness of Artificial Insemination and Buffalo improvement programs under field conditions in India.

Generally natural service is preferred over Artificial Insemination (A.I.) for breeding buffaloes in India. This coupled with lack of recording for productive and reproductive traits in field conditions becomes a major handicap in implementing genetic improvement programs in buffalo. BAIF Development Research Foundation -a NGO working for improvement of rural buffalo has been implementing buffalo A.I. program over more than a decade in the state of Uttar Pradesh (which has 25% buffalo population of India). In the present study >11000 daughters of 12 sires used in AI were identified and tagged at farmers' doors. The blood samples of 9775 daughters were collected and DNA was isolated. All the 12 sires used in the buffalo improvement program and their 9775 daughters were genotyped at 10 highly polymorphic microsatellite loci distributed throughout the genome. The resultant genotype at the 10 microsatellite loci of all the sire and their daughters were compared using a small software "Confirm Paternity" developed for the purpose. If the genotype of sire and its daughters matched atleast at 8 microsatellite loci it was assumed that the daughter belonged to the recorded father. A concession of 2 mismatches were permitted due to inherent technical reasons (addition of extra a by Taq polymerase in some of the PCR products and also the sizing of the allele is never a whole number). Out of 9775 daughters of these 12 sires, only 930 failed to meet the criterion while 678 daughters belonged to one of the 12 AI sires but had wrong recording of the paternity. This revealed a correct paternity of 83% under field conditions. Based on the findings, it was concluded if carefully implemented, farmers are willing to accept and rely on A.I. for buffalo improvement and it is possible to implement buffalo field progeny testing under Indian rural field conditions for their genetic improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]