Promise of In vitro Embryo Production Technology for Improvement of Cattle Reproductive Potential

In vitro embryo production is a process of creating a live animal through a combination of different procedures by oocyte collection from the female donor animal, maturation of oocytes in vitro, fertilization of oocytes in vitro and culturing embryos under a controlled laboratory environment. Production of embryos in vitro plays a role for improvement of cattle reproductive potential along with other technologies such as Ovum pick-up, Embryo transfer, Artificial insemination, gamete sexing, cryo preservation and genetic selection. Major advantages of in vitro production of embryos is that oocytes can be retrieved from slaughtered, juvenile, pregnant and old cattle. This helps to utilize a female cattle reproductive potential fully and produce greater number of embryos in a less amount of time unlike Multiple Ovulation and Embryo Transfer program which takes a long day. Another advantage of production of embryos in vitro is utilization of less semen. It takes only one straw of semen to fertilize more than two hundred oocytes. In vitro Production of embryos can be used to genetically select high potential female and male animal to produce genetically proved animal with a good performance for improving dairy and beef production. In vitro production of embryos will only be successful if factors such as breed of donor animal, age, body condition and nutritional management for the donor and recipient animals, laboratory equipments, bull effect, cryopreservation and semen preparation method can be controlled and managed. In vitro production of embryos along with ovum pick up technology can be taken as one of conservation strategy to increase the number of endangered animals. In general In vitro Production of embryos can be regarded as the economic gain of the country if employed in a large scale program.