Scientists Want To Clone Buffalo

                 Thai researchers are turning their attention to
                 the once-plentiful water buffalo whose numbers
                 are declining due to modernisation

                 BANGKOK -- Thai researchers are now using
                 cloning technology to save the traditional beast of
                 burden from becoming mythical creatures.

                 After successfully cloning a cow a month ago, Thai
                 researchers are turning their attention to the
                 once-plentiful water buffalo whose numbers are
                 declining.

                 Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok had announced
                 success in cloning a calf from the ear cells of a
                 Brangus cow.

                 It was the first successful experiment of its kind in
                 South-east Asia. University researchers confirmed
                 yesterday that they had started work on cloning a
                 water buffalo and had already developed several
                 embryos from skin cells, reported The Bangkok Post.

                 The university's Research Centre for Bioscience in
                 Animal Production has already produced a buffalo
                 embryo and is now looking for a suitable surrogate
                 mother for an implant, said Dr Sanpetch Sophone,
                 one of the project veterinarians.

                 According to centre officials, searching for the
                 surrogate mother requires care as the birth rate of the
                 buffalo is only one third that of cows.

                 In the meantime, the embryo is being kept in a frozen
                 state.

                 Cloning work on a buffalo first began in October last
                 year, with the centre producing an embryo from an
                 egg and the skin of a buffalo foetus obtained from a
                 slaughterhouse.

                 The decision to clone the water buffalo, the icon of
                 traditional rice farming, was due to its rapidly
                 dwindling numbers as agriculture modernised.

                 Experts have warned that water buffaloes could
                 disappear from Thailand and in future exist only in
                 legend, pictures and history books.

                 Professor Maneewan Kamonpatana, the centre's
                 director who has studied buffaloes for three decades,
                 said changed farming methods, which have seen the
                 replacement of water buffaloes with mechanised
                 ploughs, has reduced the need for the animals.

                 The Agriculture Ministry revealed that the number of
                 water buffaloes in Thai rice fields had fallen from 6.1
                 million in 1981 to 1.2 million last year. Cloning could
                 reverse this trend.

                 Buffaloes have long been beasts of burden valued and
                 venerated by farmers but times have changed.

                 "Now, the farmers have become taxi drivers and the
                 women work in factories," said Professor
                 Kamonpatana.

                 "They use mechanised ploughs or buy buffaloes from
                 others during the planting season and have them killed
                 when the farming season is over," he said.

                      Adapted from The Straits Times, 8 Apr 2000.