Armenian agriculture ministry plans to open cattle embryo transfer laboratory
15.03.2012,
19:50
Armenian Agriculture Ministry is planning to open a cattle embryo transfer laboratory, Ashot Hovhannisyan, chief of the ministry’s division in charge of cattle breeding, said on Thursday.
YEREVAN, March 15. /ARKA/. Armenian Agriculture Ministry is planning to open a cattle embryo transfer laboratory, Ashot Hovhannisyan, chief of the ministry’s division in charge of cattle breeding, said on Thursday.
He told journalists that highbred cows would be used as donors.
The embryo will be produced via artificial insemination and will be transplanted into ordinary cows.
“We may have at least seven highbred calves instead of one,” Hovhannisyan said. “Unfortunately, we have no specialists for this laboratory, but we, with the assistance of Eduardo Eurnekian [Argentine entrepreneur of Armenian descent], will send the best students to Argentina for retraining.”
He said that Argentina is reckoned among leaders in this area.
Donor cows, he said, are being brought to Armenia from Germany, Austria and Czech Republic. Some 1,500 heifers are already brought to the country.
The head of the ministry’s unit said that there were about 710,000 cows in Armenia as of March 15, and their number is expected to grow to 870,000 in late April.
He said that the ministry is also working out a sheep-breeding development program, which implies the import of new breeds of sheep, particularly, a fat-rumped sheep which give lamb crop twice a year and another breed of fat-rumped sheep that has high meat qualities.
Hovhannisyan said that the number of sheep in Armenia grew from 512,000 in early 2010 to 600,000 in January 2012 hitting the record high in four decades.
Speaking about chicken farming, he said that the ministry pays proper attention also to this area – a poultry development concept will be adopted in the country soon.
“We failed to retain the Soviet-era volumes of chicken production – 32,000 tons a year,” he said “Now our annual output is 8,000 to 8,500 tons, and this is an absolutely unsatisfactory result that caters for only 20 to 22% of our needs. We’ll try to spur chicken farming development.”-0---
