As China's middle class grows, the country's huge population demands an increasing supply of dairy products.
China is overly reliant on overseas purchases for imported dairy cows, but now scientists with Northwest A&F University believe they have come up with a solution.
They recently witnessed the births of three cloned cows, that they call "super cows," because of their desired genetic traits.
The newborn calves came from different farms and are capable of producing 18 tons of milk a year and more than 100 tons in a lifetime.
"The breakthrough has great significance for China to concentrate and preserve in an economically feasible way the very best cows in the country, and it is a success in the country's efforts to revitalize its agricultural sector with vital seed and breeder animals," said project leader Jin Yapin, according to the Global Times.
The publication cites a press release from Northwest A&F University as saying that China is 70 percent reliant on overseas purchases for dairy cows. China has about 6.6 million Holstein Fiesian cattle that were imported over the years.
'Reincarnating' the Dairy Cows
Scientists took some tissue from a cow's ear that enabled them to "reincarnate" the animals, the press release reportedly said. Now that the cows are successfully cloned, China can begin breeding them.
"Using cloning technology alone won't have any economic meaning, and the combination of tapping reproductive technology and using low-productive cows as surrogates allowed us to reproduce 20 more offspring compared with just using cloning for a given time period," Jin said.
Among the first 120 cloned embryos, 42% were impregnated and 17.5% were still fertile after 200 days, the press release said, according to the Global Times.
"We plan to take two to three years to build up a herd comprised of over 1,000 super cows, as a solid foundation to tackle China's reliance on overseas dairy cows and the issue of the risk of being 'choked'," Jin said.
