THE Philippine Carabao Center (PCC) is constructing a P300-million biotechnology center under a three-year multicommodity research and development project funded by a soft loan program of the United States government dubbed as the Public Law 480.

An attached agency of the Department of Agriculture (DA), PCC is the country’s new biotechnology center for ruminants. The agency is expanding its center to serve as a common facility for dairy and meat animals not only for carabao, but also cattle, goat and sheep.

“We’re able to get funding for multicommodity research which allows us to cut across commodities other than just carabao,” Dr. Libertado Cruz, PCC executive director, said in a statement.

PCC intends to fully use the marker-assisted selection (MAS) method in choosing the best animal breeds it intends to reproduce.

An equipment the PCC plans to acquire is the DNA sequencer. At a cost of P18 million to P20 million, the sequencer helps research identify animals with superior traits. It is especially useful for breeding animals that could produce higher quantities of milk than the average animal.

Animals that have the DNA markers associated with the good traits are mated with other superior animals. The semen of these animals would be distributed for crossbreeding with native animals through artificial insemination.

The PCC is also expanding its cryobank, a gene bank for animal embryos, semen, blood and tissue—both native and foreign breeds—that need to be preserved.

Preservation through cryobanking in below zero degrees temperature would enable researchers to reproduce a specific breed known to carry a genetic trait of important economic value, such as high milk production and quality meat characterized by good marbling, tenderness and high-protein content.

Cruz noted that even the local breed may have future uses.

“The indigenous breed has distinct advantage which we don’t require at the moment but can be valuable in the future. One is resistance to disease, resistance to heat, and many others that have not yet been identified. The problem is that genes that regulate this resistance have not yet been identified,” he said.

The only animal-gene bank in the Philippines, the cryobank is in Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, where the headquarters of PCC is also located. The cryobank has a total of 76,249 accessions including purebreds and crossbreds of carabao and cattle. It also keeps 2,168 native germplasms.

The agency has started ranking its own buffaloes according to expected breeding value (EBV). It has 881 animals that have EBVs which indicate milk production record of female animals. For the male buffalo, researchers place an EBV on potential for milk production based on the milk production of their female offspring.

Cruz said the PCC’s capability to determine molecular markers will also enhance the country’s ability to conduct quarantine or sanitary and phytosanitary processes when screening animals against diseases prior to importation.

The agency noted that the Philippines in the past had imported sick animals whose diseases have spread in the country because it lacked adequate ability to quarantine animals and test them with technical capabilities at the molecular level.

Cruz also said that PCC’s “capability for traceability through molecular markers” will be useful in the country’s long-term plan to export meat products.

He noted that traceability is now a feature in food safety required by the export market, as the market is seriously concerned about the origin of farm products.