NDDB, Odisha govt to sign pact for semen station

The National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) will set up a state of the art semen station in Odisha with a production target of 45 lakh doses annually to meet the increasing demand of disease free frozen semen.

NDDB will sign a pact with the state government on Wednesday for the new centre to be built near Baripada spreading over 127 acres of land. “We are hopeful that the semen production will start from early 2016 and about 140 bulls will be housed in the new station,” said Dilip Rath, managing director, NDDB.

The semen station will procure high quality of bulls of different dairy breeds like jersey, jersey crossbred, Hariana, Red Sindhi, Murrah etc.

T Nanda Kumar, Chairman, NDDB said, “Around 100 million semen doses will be required annually for the artificial insemination (AI) in the country and we are strengthening the semen stations.” For this, about 2,500 indigenous bulls will be required and 200 jersey and Holstein Friesian bulls will be imported.

In Odisha, the AI coverage is lower at 16 per cent compared to national average of 23 per cent. The estimated milk production in the state stood at 1.86 million tonnes in 2013-l4, which is 1.4 per cent of national milk production. Odisha ranks 14th among the milk producing states. The cooperative dairies together procured 3.9 lakh kg per day in 2013-14, which is 1.1 per cent of country's cooperative milk procurement. Liquid milk marketing by Odisha’s cooperative unions is pegged at 4.3 lakh kg per day in 2013- 14, which is 1.6 per cent of the national average. The processing capacity of cooperatives in the state was 5.45 lakh litres per day.

As per the estimate of NDDB, in 2011-12, the per capita availability of milk in Odisha was 112 gms/ day, about one-third of the availability at all India level of 290 gms per day. In terms of milk production, the state has registered a growth of 6.2 per cent per annum during the decade upto 2012-13, higher than the national growth of 4.6 per cent.

The dominant category of dairy animal is indigenous cows (mostly non-descript) accounting for 74 per cent of total in-milk animals followed by crossbred cows pegged at 17 per cent and buffaloes nine per cent. Rath said, there are about 325,000 crossbred cows, 1,397,000 indigenous cows and 1,900,000 buffaloes.

The milch animal productivity in Odisha is 2.5 kilogram per day as compared to national average of 4.3 kilogram per day. Under National Dairy Plan-1, seven sub-projects of three implementing agencies ( Cuttack, Sambalpur and Puri milk unions) are under implementation with a total outlay of Rs 15.10 crore.

“We are expecting another 11 projects, out of which we have received four proposals from Koraput and Balasore milk unions and the balance seven is expected from Ganjam, Gajapati, Bolangir-Kalahandi-Nuapada milk unions with an additional cost of about Rs 18 crore,” Rath added.

The NDP-I targets coverage of 600 villages in the state by local resources persons providing ration balancing advisory services to 44000 milch animals, coverage of 594 villages and enrolling of 6000 additional milk producers (of which at least 50 per cent would be women and 50 per cent of the new village societies also comprising women). The plan envisages construction of 25 silage demonstration units and one bio mass bunker, purchase of two mowers for demonstration.