Agriculture News : ICAR-CSWRI Released Prolific Breed Cross ‘AVISHAAN’

ICAR-Central Sheep & Wool Research Institute, Avikanagar released a high performing prolific three breed cross developed by it. The prolific cross is a composite cross having 12.5% Garole, 37.5% Malpura and 50% Patanwadi blood.

The cross named as ‘Avishaan’ was released by Dr. V.K. Taneja, Chairman, RAC & Ex-DDG, ICAR & former Vice Chancellor, GADVASU, Ludhiana. The prolific sheep project conceived and inspired by the guidance of Dr. Taneja.

He advocated the introgression of FecB gene responsible for prolificacy in Garole sheep into native Malpura sheep after prescreening of the gene by PCR-RFLP technique. It took almost 18 years to develop this cross.

Avishaan is having the unique capabilities of producing more lambs per lambing, higher body weights, more milk and survivability at par with native breeds.

The average growth performance of “Avishaan” in farm condition is 3.30 kg at birth, 16.80 kg at 3 month, 25.90 kg at 6 month and 34.70 kg at 12 month age. “Avishaan” excelled by about 30% over native Malpura sheep in terms of Ewe Productivity Efficiency (EPE) at six month of age. Farmers can get 1.5 times income from rearing of “Avishaan” without extra investments.