Expert: Focus must be on buffalo milk production

Tribune News Service

Karnal, March 27

Professor AK Misra, Chairman, Agricultural Scientist Selection Board, New Delhi, emphasised on the need to focus on the production of buffalo milk, development of indigenous dairy breeds and comparative study of dairy production in exotic versus hybrid breeds of cows. Besides, he stressed on the need to develop adaptation and mitigation stress strategies for dairy animals which are suffering due to climate change. Prof Misra also highlighted the need to increase the per capita consumption.

“India has emerged as the global leader of milk production. There has been an evolutionary sequence of small dairies turning into mid and large dairies. The per capita consumption of milk has risen from 130 gram to 412 gram. Our country has moved ahead of the world average of per capita consumption of milk but still we lag behind countries like USA, European Union, New Zealand and Canada,” said the chairman while chairing programme of Dr D Sundaresan Memorial Lecture on the topic “Dairy farming in India: Challenges and opportunities” at NDRI, here on Friday. He firmly believed that the per capita consumption would surge ahead up to 468 grams by 2030.

He said to shift from population driven to innovation driven production system, there is a need to give proper attention to animals feed, use of good quality sexual semen for artificial insemination, estrus detection and synchronisation and timely insemination of animals.