North-south/west-east cooperation in agricultural biotechnologies:

some lessons from Italy and China in buffalo

Riccardo Aleandri

Director of the Center “Policies and bioeconomy” of the Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA), Rome, Italy

International Symposium on The Role of Agricultural Biotechnologies in Sustainable Food Systems and Nutrition

February 17, 2016 - Rome, Italy

Session 3.3: Investing in biotechnology solutions through capacity development and partnerships

1

Biotechnologies and animal breeding

AI

ET

OPU

QTL

MAS

GENOMIC MODEL

…

2

Preliminary needs in North/South or West/East relationships

To identify common languages

To identify complementary goals

To identify common interests

3

Buffalo population

India 105M

China 23M 12%

Pakistan 29M

Italy .4M .2%

4

World 195M

Buffalo population

5

Genetic Improvment Plan

2. Estimates of additive components

3. Selection program

1.Active population

Population AI MR

Italy

China

+ +

Active population

6

Buffalo population in the world

India 105M 0

China 23M 0

Pakistan 29M 0

Italy .4M 56.812 (2013)

Population Active population

7

The Buffalo active population in Italyis the largest in the world!

8

CHINA-ITALY PROJECT

GOAL:The Italian Mediterranean Buffalo to improve buffalo milk production in China

The Sino-Italian Joint Research Center on Buffalo (set up in Nanning, Guangxi on Oct. 31, 2015

TOOL:

9

In China private partners1. AI project

In China private partners

2. Nucleus Herds project

In Italy and China

Joint Research Center

3. Genomic project

CHINA-ITALY PROJECT

10

Semen lab

- 10,000 ÷ 20,000 frozen doses/year per bull

ET and OPU lab to produce embryos from bull dams

Farm to keep Mediterranean young bulls

Computer lab to run genomic indexes

AI in China

11

Nucleus herds in China for upgrading

Identifing nucleus herds with about

- 100,000 females

- 300,000 females

.

.

.

.

1st year

5th year

.

.

.

.

12

Contracting nucleus herds to

Produce only buffalo milk

Use only AI with Mediterranean buffalo frozen semen

Upgrade all buffaloes to pure Mediterranean breed

13

GENOMIC PROJECT IN ITALY

14

Genotyping a reference population of 3000 milk recorded females in 1st year and 500 milk recorded females each year of pure Mediterranean buffalo

Computing allelic substitution values for genomic indexing of pure Mediterranean buffaloes

Setting up a procedure to compute the genomic index for AI pure Mediterranean bulls operating in China

15

THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION