The Union Minister for Agriculture, Shri Radha Mohan Singh holding a review meeting with the Minister of Agriculture, AH, Dairy, Fisheries and Agriculture Secretary of Karnataka, in Bengaluru on January 08, 2015.
While addressing a programme at National Institute of Veterinary Epidemiology and Disease Informatics (NIVEDI) in Bengaluru, Union agriculture minister, Mr R M Singh urged upon ICAR to have major programs to improve the indigenous breeds as the products from the indigenous cattle also have health attributes to humans.
He said that empirical evidence suggests that our indigenous breeds of cattle are relatively less prone to diseases as compared to exotic and cross-bred.
He further said that the efforts should be made to improve indigenous stock in terms of production and productivity. Agriculture minister mentioned that the best indigenous breeds like Gir, Tharparkar, Rathi, Sahiwal etc. have better heat tolerance, feed conversion efficiency and disease resistance.
Mr Singh said that in the XII Five Year Plan, the institute was renamed as the National Institute of Veterinary Epidemiology and Disease Informatics to expand its research activities with 32 AICRP centers covering all states and union territories of the country.
Mr Singh mentioned that the role of scientists of NIVEDI continues to be in the prevention, control and eradication of diseases to help maximize animal production and safeguarding human health from those diseases transmitted by animals and their products using risk analysis data and precise diagnostics. He urged the institute to research and study the aspects which make the indigenous breeds resistant to diseases.
He congratulated the Indian Council of Agricultural Research for setting up of a world class facility for research on epidemiology of animal diseases at National Institute of Veterinary Epidemiology and Disease Informatics (NIVEDI) in Bengaluru. In addition to development of diagnositics, Mr R M Singh said research partnership between the public and private sector is also essential to achieve faster progress and dissemination of technology to the end-users.
Thus, there is a need to link these two sectors to have their activities complemented in a “Public Private Partnership� mode. He expressed hope that the institute will make use of the new opportunities to give a new direction to their R&D and other service sector activities in a huge way.
