The Philippines has achieved a significant headway in its efforts to produce "supercows," or genetically superior dairy animals through biotechnology.

This feat was achieved by the "Production of High-quality Philippine Dairy-type Animals through Reproductive Biotechniques," a project which employs superovulation and embryo transfer (SOET), embryo cryopreservation, and artificial insemination (AI).

The Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD), a Los Baños, Laguna-based council under the Department of Science and Technology provided the financial support to the project.

Implementing the four-year project are researchers from the University of the Philippines Los Baños-Dairy Training and Research Institute (UPLB-DTRI), led by Dr. Antonio A. Rayos and Dr. Jose Arceo N. Bautista. They refined the SOET and embryo vitrification (rapid deep-freezing of cells) techniques to suit the Philippine conditions.

To date, the project has produced 25 ET dairy animals, so-named because they were produced using the embryo transfer (ET) technology.

One of these is Doc Pat-ET, the first true F1 Holstein-Sahiwal bull produced in the country through ET, using pure Holstein Friesian donor and frozen semen from pure Sahiwal bull.

Doc Pat-ET, named after PCARRD executive director Patricio S. Faylon, and the other male ET animals born after it are now showing signs of genetic superiority relative to their counterparts. They are now being trained for semen production.

On the other hand, female ET animals born in 2001 had already been bred. One of them gave birth in February to a female calf and now produces milk from 12 liters to 14 liters per day.

Ten ET heifers will soon be introduced into the milk production line.

The project has also cryopreserved 59 good-quality embryos, which will be transferred to recipient animals both in the UPLB-DTRI farm and in the National Dairy Authority (NDA)-assisted dairy farms in other areas of the country.

Rayos said that the production of a significant number of ET heifers and bulls with varying blood compositions of the Holstein Friesian and Sahiwal breeds that can be used in establishing the type of an adaptable local breed of dairy animal is among the project's landmark result. Moreover, the 63-percent pregnancy rate attained in this project is very high, the highest among ET conducted locally in cattle and may be considered as one of the highest in the world.

UPLB-DTRI will continue to produce at least 15 ET animals a year for herd comparison of productive and reproductive performance until the most probable producing ability (MPPA) and estimated breeding values (EBV) are obtained.

According to Bautista, the ET offspring that will show excellent MPPAs and EBVs will be selected to form an elite herd of dairy animal at the UPLB-DTRI farm.From this PCARRD-funded project alone, the country can produce about 120 good-quality embryos from the top 10 percent of the DTRI herd.

Valued at an average cost of US$600 each embryo, the researchers projected a total savings of US$72,000 or roughly P4 million on an import-substitution basis.

From the 11 ET bull calves produced, seven are expected to eventually become semen donors after completing the bull-training program that is now taking place at UPLB-DTRI.

Semen production from these bulls is estimated at 3,000 doses per sire, or 21,000 doses for the seven bulls.

This will enable the government to save on the importation cost of frozen semen (P250/straw) amounting to a few million pesos a year.

Moreover, the bulls will be used in the national breeding program of NDA in maintaining certain blood compositions for practical small- to medium-scale dairy operation.

Through this project, PCARRD and UPLB-DTRI hope to preserve and enhance the gains of the government's dairy breed improvement program by establishing a nucleus herd of genetically superior dairy cattle at the UPLB-DTRI farm. The nucleus farm is envisioned to be the sustainable source of high genetic dairy animals in the future.