First Badri Calf Born Through OPU-IVF in Uttarakhand

A healthy Badri female calf has been born through Ovum Pick-Up and In Vitro Fertilization, known as OPU-IVF. The calf was born on 11 September 2026 at the Academic Dairy Farm. The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare announced it on 12 September 2026. A Badri embryo was transferred into a Sahiwal recipient cow, and that cow gave birth to the calf. Badri cattle are an indigenous genetic resource of Uttarakhand and are recognised as the state animal of Uttarakhand.

Who did the work

Two institutions worked together on this. The first is the ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute at Karnal. The second is G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology at Pantnagar in Uttarakhand. Money for the work came from the Uttarakhand Biotechnology Council at Haldi. The research programme began in 2023, when Dr M. S. Chauhan was Vice-Chancellor of the university. Teams from both sides spent three years setting up the procedures for embryo production and embryo transfer in this breed.

How the technique works

The semen came through the Uttarakhand Livestock Development Board. Another synchronised crossbred recipient cow is expected to deliver a Badri calf within the following week.

Why it matters

Dr Dheer Singh, Director of ICAR-NDRI at Karnal, said such techniques can multiply elite female germplasm much faster than conventional breeding. He said the birth gives a foundation for structured breed-improvement and germplasm-conservation programmes for the breed. The team is also working on cloning high-producing Badri cows, and has already produced cloned Badri embryos at several stages of the research. In the next phase, embryos from both OPU-IVF and cloning are to be transferred into Sahiwal, crossbred and Badri recipient cows. For a livestock breed of the Himalayan region with small numbers, this is a way of raising the rate of multiplication without losing the qualities that make the breed valuable.