Published 20-07-2003
The use of embryos for improving herd is an emerging technology that has usually been used in our country for a closed preserve of large producers, basically by high import costs have.
But even among the select group of individuals and institutions financially able and willing to ally with science for better animal groups constitution and high yield, embryo implantation was used in a very limited way.
At home use of such technology not matter over a hundred cases annually, which is certainly a meager amount if you want to achieve is to improve the quality of local livestock to prepare for the export process in the making.
Its low utilization, was due to the high cost of detaining and apply technology, leading to the implantation of an embryo is empinara on 500 dollars, as indicated by the veterinarian Joseph Cox Ureta, director of laboratory animal reproduction at the University of Concepción.
However, through a project executed by the investigator and was financed Fondef, by Conicyt, could drastically reduce the costs of production of embryos, to be adopted by commercial and smallholder.
The importance of using such technology is obvious if a number of factors are considered: the incorporation of our country circuit meat exporters, the need to rapidly increase the population of domestic cattle, profitability that can have the business, inter alia.
The research results can not qualify but as surprising, as currently implantation of embryos does not exceed 80 dollars, in the case of elite genetic and no more than 35 commercial genetic dollars for the production of meat twins.
One element to be considered to appreciate in due magnitude the importance of the study is that working with embryos is short term so that it can produce up 200 offspring of a single player in a year elite.
Technological forefront
According to Cox, the development of technology to produce embryos was not without difficulty given the many factors involved for the results obtained required.
This is to handle hormonal stimulation for eggs, successfully manage to capture the follicular puncture, madurarlos in vitro, preparing the sperm to fertilize successfully and then grow the embryos to have a reasonable potential for development, Cox explains.
Globally, management techniques have shown high success rate in handling embryos. For example, is considered an 50% Success in egg retrieval, 90% Success at maturity, 80% in fertilization and 30% blastocyst development, which are the units that are stored and frozen pending implementation.
But, at the University of Concepción, the team working on the project has obtained better results than those that mark the activity of the best international laboratories, which encourages good prospects for the future.
One of the most attractive elements of the technology being used by researchers is the ability to choose the sex of the child to be born which will have a fundamental impact especially among dairy cattle, where females are most needed by producers.
For those responsible for the initiative one of the key aspects to develop the initiative was the need for our country to be self-sufficient in the production of embryos, by risks in other countries in health terms.
This is one reason why the embryos used to form the genetic core were brought from New Zealand and Australia, countries considered “clean” and not from United States, Canada or the European Union, where they have discovered pockets of various diseases that do not exist in Chile.
The Discussion
20 July 2003
page 4
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