10.30 crore Rs funds allocated for DBT-GADVASU-Canine Research Centre 

Pashu Sandesh, 17th June 2019

A high level expert  committee from Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India comprising Advisors to DBT Dr. S R Rao, Dr. A K Rawat and eminent scientists Dr. H V Batra, DRDE Gwalior, Dr. Gaya Prasad, Vice Chancellor, Meerut Agriculture University, Dr. RK Singh, Director, IVRI and Brig. Devender Kumar, RVC, Indian Army visited Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana (GADVASU) between 6th and 7th June 2019 to review the progress of ongoing DBT– GADVASU Canine Research Centre and Networks project.

Dr JPS Gill, Director of Research and Project Coordinator informed that DBT was granted 10.30 crore Rs funds for DBT– GADVASU-Canine Research Centre which include 3 Network Projects, 11 In-house R&D projects and 3 projects to establish facilities and services. GADVASU is also the Project

Monitoring Unit of this Canine Research Center and total grant for GADVASU projects is 7.6 crore. DBT Experts concluded that there is immense scope in improving canine health and building infrastructural support to strengthen clinical and surgical practices for improving canine health. The team visited the newly established research units of the Canine Research Centre viz., Veterinary Hospital Database Management System, Canine orthopaedics, Semen cryopreservation, Dental unit, Renal disease unit, Gastroenterology as well as the Project monitoring unit. The team lauded the efforts of the researchers to meet the objectives delineated under the project. The experts were very much impressed to witness the infrastructure facilities created under the project and they claimed that GADVASU has performed even 30-40% much more than their expectations. 

Dr A S Nanda, the Vice-Chancellor, told that this mega-project is working in several areas like Canine nutrition, multivalent vaccine delivery system, Diagnostics and biomarkers for Canine distemper, Tuberculosis, Leptospirosis; Development of novel suture materials and implants for canine arthropathies, Development of biomaterials for root canal treatment and crown therapy in dogs. Besides, scientists are also working on developing a portable acoustic sensor based canine pregnancy detection system and Semen cryopreservation. Dr Nanda said, it's time to devise novel strategies for controlling stray dog population & it is a great opportunity and challenge for Vet Varsity to undertake such public friendly research.

Dr SK Uppal Dean, Post Graduate Studies and Programme coordinator told that in near future apart from advanced clinical care, the facility for parentage determination in dogs will be available at GADVASU that will help to study lineage in dogs using DNA Finger Printing Technique.

Scientists from various institutes like IVRI, IIT Indore, State Veterinary Universities of Tamil Nadu, Assam and Karnataka participated in this meeting and presented the progress of their research work.