Mission Punganur project shows commitment of Andhra govt towards local farmers: Animal Husbandry dept director

Andhra Pradesh's Animal Husbandry department's director Dr Amarendra Kumar on Wednesday applauded the efforts made by the state government for the Mission Punganur project which shows its commitment towards local farmers.

"The Mission Punganur project shows the commitment of Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy's government to local farmers. Chief Minister's vision is aimed at improving the quality and number of Punganur animals and revive them to their original status known as 'Poor Man Cow'", the director said.

Mission Punganur exhibits the commitment of the government to the revival of the famous Punganur cattle that is rich in nutritious milk and has proven to be an essential and effective tool to practice organic farming. This project will be implemented in the next five years at the University Pulivendula Research Centre.

As per the press release by the state government, the primary objectives of the project are as follows: Conservation and propagation of the Pungganur cattle; Rapid multiplication of the superior females through embryo transfer technology.

Another important thing in the project is the efficient use of low genetic merit cows as a surrogate and producing elite offsprings and Skill pool development in IVF-ET for extensive application in the field.

Through the implementation of the Mission Punganur, three to four-fold increase in the reproductive efficiency of cows can be expected. As against the production of 2.5 offsprings in 5 years at an average from each cow under normal circumstances, this project envisages production of 8.5 offsprings from each cow in 5 years. A total of 1690 offspring is expected to be produced from 200 superior donors.

Moreover, the Andhra Pradesh government had issued a sanction of 69.36 crores to the Andhra Pradesh Centre for Advanced Research on Livestock Limited, Pulivendula for the establishment of Punganur cattle production using IVF technology under "Mission Punganur Research project".

Further speaking on the topic Animal Husbandry Director, Dr Amarendra Kumar said that "Andhra Pradesh government under the direction of Chief minister Jagan Mohan Reddy sanctioned the mission Punganur project, with the project costing Rs 69 crores to revive the nearly extinct Punganur breed. Punganur breed milk has nutritive and medicinal values also, previously our state used to have a large number of punganur animals but now the number has reduced to some hundreds."

"So keeping the view of this creamy situation our CM Reddy has directed to take up the propagation and conservation of the Punganur breed. Earlier people used to call Punganur breed the Poor Man's cow and now it is almost getting extinct but this mission Punganur will revive the glory of punganur breed and we are hopeful that soon in AP we will have a large number of Punganur cows in our state", he said.

( With inputs from ANI )