10th Annual Scientific Review Meet of NCVTC network was held on 20 Nov. 2020

National Centre for Veterinary Type Cultures (NCVTC), a first dedicated facility of its kind in the country for collection, identification, characterization and documentation of animal microbes from livestock sector in India held its VII Annual Scientific Review meet for the Network Projects, at ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, Haryana today.

Dr. H. Rahman, DDG (Animal Sciences) emphasized upon the ex-situ conservation of microbes, and shifting the focus of culture collection towards characterization of important pathogen deposits so as to compare them with prevalent vaccine strains for animal disease control, combating antibiotic resistance and mitigating green house climate changes. He impressed upon increasing the collection of microbes from the economically important livestock species viz. cattle, buffalo and pigs. He also asserted NCVTC to conduct a workshop for network units about ISO9001-2008 documentation in Microbial reposition by NCVTC.

Dr A K Srivastava, Director, ICAR-NDRI, Karnal underlined the important role of NCVTC in conservation of microbial genetic resources for future research and development specifically in the areas of public health significance, vaccines, probiotics which will help in augmenting livestock productivity.

Dr. B. N. Tripathi, Project Coordinator, NCVTC and Director, ICAR-National Research Centre on Equines in his preamble address, apprised the members about the progress made by the repository over the years and informed the house that Culture Collection operations at NCVTC are now governed under ISO9001-2008 system. He stated that the repository has reached to a milestone of nearly 3000 cultures through the concerted efforts from various quarters. The repository of veterinary microbes presently boasts 1037 bacteria (spread across 55 different genera and 13 different hosts), more than 200 viruses (across 11 different hosts, 22 different genera and 12 different virus families) and 76 bacteriophages (across 7 different families).

The review meet was attended by more than 30 PI’s/Co-PI’s from different Network units from all over the country.