Hyderabad : With one fifth of the world’s livestock in its kitty India is the highest producer of milk globally. Numbers and not productivity make India number one. Despite holding largest livestock only 9% of cow milk and 67% of buffalo milk of world’s total production comes from India. While India aim’s to achieve 175 million tones of milk production by 2020. Disease control, research, better feed management and monitoring systems can help to achieve her target. These and many more interesting facets of animal science, a diverse and fascinating amalgamation of applied and basic life sciences, fundamentally focused on enhancing the efficiency, profitability and sustainability of the domestic animal industries have come alive at the 2nd International Conference on Animal & Dairy Sciences being held at HICC.

Leading academic scientists, eminent personalities, researchers and scholars from the globe in the field of animal sciences have converged at the 2nd International Conference on Animal & Dairy Sciences being held at HICC here. The conference addresses ‘new challenges and emerging issues in animal sciences & dairy research’. The three-day conference being organised by OMICS group provides a common platform to researchers to present their research, exchange and share their enriching experiences and major breakthroughs besides have personalised interactions with others engaged in some pioneering work in the area of animal and dairy sciences.

“I am astounded by the tremendous interest espoused by the global industry in marketing of animal-health commodities, monitoring of animal health in large scale animal-production programs and biomedical research. The event has enabled to share some path breaking findings that will help to setup a road map to overcome the key bottlenecks, redefine the animal-human ecology and come out with ways to enhance productivity,” informed Dr. Srinubabu Gedela, CEO of OMICS Group at the inaugural ceremony.

Delivering the key note address Md Hafeez, former VC Sri Venkateshwara Veterinary University said, “AP and Telangana together lead in milk, meat and egg production in the country. Need of the hour is effective utilisation of available resources for improving general production levels of India. Research findings need to reach the farmers, live stock owners and industry. The extension wing of animal sciences, veterinary sciences including fisheries need to be strengthened to enable transfer of technology at the grass root level to the farmers.”

S.N. Singh from Biovet Pvt Ltd sharing the keynote forum on his experiences in strategies for vaccine development for emerging and re-emerging diseases said, “Livestock is emerging as a driving force in the socioeconomic transformation of the rural sector in India. Indian livestock sector contributes about 6% of the total economy and 25% to agricultural economy. The world becomes more integrated through the trade of goods and services and capital flows, it has become easier for diseases to spread through states, over borders and across ocean and to do serious damage to vulnerable human and animal populations. Affordable health to the people is the mission. It could only be achieved by ensuring food security and nutritional guarantee to not only to humans but animals too in the country. And therefore to enhance our live stock productivity we need to develop vaccines and use them effectively to combat and control diseases, besides overcoming morbidity and mortality.”

The conference has brought to the fore current issues, latest technologies and techniques in Animal Breeding and Genetics, Health and Nutrition, Animal Biotechnology, Milk and Dairy Technology, Animal Diseases, Veterinary Medicine and Treatment, Animal Models and Testing, Animal Ecology, Recent Developments, Fisheries and Aquaculture, Poultry and Veterinary Public Health through a series of scientific sessions in the subjects. The conference presents an invaluable opportunity to establish a scientific network that binds the academia with industry to foster collaboration.

Besides key findings in various other branches especially in dairy farming related to breeding, raising and utilization of dairy animals, milk production and the various dairy foods processed from it are being deliberated upon at this OMICS event. “Global population is increasing at a rapid pace. Production capacities need to be stepped up in meat, milk and poultry production to meet the growing need of protein rich food. This can only be achieved by significant improvement in research and production of safe food,” underlined Kumar Venkitanarayanan, University of Connecticut, USA at the inaugural session.

The post lunch session which was chaired by Prof Rama Prasad J of Ambo University, Ethiopia said, “There is shortage of feed and fodder in India. Today there is an urgent need to enhance our animal nutrition and fodder resource utilisation capacities. Effective strategies for optimum utilisation of feed and fodder resources for improving meat and milk production from Indian livestock will ameliorate the situation.”

Animal Science is a diverse and fascinating amalgamation of applied and basic life sciences, fundamentally focused on enhancing the efficiency, profitability and sustainability of the domestic animal industries. The broad scope of this international conference encompasses various facets of both domesticated and wild animal species. It directs the health and nutritional needs of domestic animals, wildlife, zoo animals and birds too.