Abstract
The global human population is anticipated to rise from
7.9 billion today to 9.7 billion by 2050 and a sense of Malthusian crisis has set in: how can all these extra mouths be fed? With the scarcity of arable land, clean water, and energy, increased production of food is the major concern in the twenty-first century for achieving global food security.
Foods of animal origin will play an important role to meet the daunting challenge of feeding a huge population because animal products are a significant source of high-quality protein and other vital micronutrients. Also, farm animals are essential for a sustainable agricultural system, particularly for smallholder farmers. However, increased animal disease burden, abrupt changes in global climatic conditions, and poor reproductive efficiency are some of the hindrances in front of the production of farm animals. To meet the escalating demand of animal food products and sustainable agricultural production, the adoption of modern reproductive biotechnologies are of great relevance. All these frontiers technologies related to animal reproduction ranging from manipulation of male and female gametes, transgenesis, and stem cell technology are collectively referred as assisted reproductive technologies (ART). This chapter is aimed to highlight the various ART used worldwide to augment the reproductive efficiency in farm animals. Some of them are conventional technologies like artificial insemination (AI), multiple ovulation and embryo transfer (MOET), superovulation, etc. Besides those, light will be shed on advanced technologies involving gamete and embryo level manipulation such as in vitro embryo production (IVEP), transgenesis, and sexing of spermatozoa and embryos.A. Mukherjee (X)
Department of Animal Biotechnology, West Bengal University of Animal & Fishery Sciences, Kolkata, West Bengal, India
P.
K. Das ∙ D. Banerjee ∙ J. MukherjeeDepartment of Veterinary Physiology, West Bengal University of Animal & Fishery Sciences, Kolkata, West Bengal, India
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 615
P. K. Das et al. (eds.), Textbook of Veterinary Physiology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9410-4_24
Graphical Abstract
Description of the graphic: Assisted reproductive technologies in farm animals include in vitro embryo production and embryo transfer (1), sex sorting of spermatozoa by fluorescence-activated cell sorter (2), somatic cell nuclear transfer or cloning developed by Ian Wilmut with the cloned sheep “Dolly” (3), precise editing of genome by gene transfer (4), transgenic animal production methods vis-a-vis pronuclear microinjection, embryonic stem cell, and spermatogonial stem cell-mediated transgenesis and sperm-mediated gene transfer (5)
Keywords
Sperm ∙ Oocyte ∙ Embryo ∙ Animal cloning ∙ Transgenesis
Learning Objectives
• Knowledge of traditional method of assisted reproductive technologies.
• Familiarity with in vitro embryo production by different techniques.
• Method to produce offspring of desired sex by sperm sexing.
• Methods and application of genome level manipulation of livestock by transgenesis.
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