(ORDO NEWS) — Chinese geneticists have successfully cloned a racehorse brought from Germany. The PRC Horse Breeders Association has already approved the participation of the clone in future competitions.
Cloning offers exciting prospects in the equestrian sport by reducing the cost of breeding horses. Today, the price of a thoroughbred horse suitable for participation in international competitions reaches several million dollars, so not every athlete can afford to buy and keep at least one animal.
In addition, cloning helps extend the “lifetime” of a beneficial combination of genes and use them for many generations to improve local breeds.
For two decades, horse cloning has been practiced in many countries, and now China has joined the list: the local Horse Breeders Association has approved the participation of a cloned horse in equestrian competitions.
According to the information site France24.com , the genetic “father” of the clone named Ursus was brought from Germany, and in June last year, a surrogate mother gave birth to a healthy foal.
The Chinese company SinoGene was responsible for the process of cloning the horse, which had previously conducted successful experiments on cloning dogs and wolves.
The cloned stallion Zhuang Zhuang (translated from Chinese as “growing healthy and strong”) should be the key to the successful development of equestrian sports in China, which lacks high-performance horses and is inferior to Western countries in breeding technology.
So far, the breeding of competitive horses in the PRC is completely dependent on the import of expensive animals from other countries, so cloning can help solve this problem and make Chinese horse breeders independent of Western producers.
In recent years, China has conducted many successful cloning experiments of a wide variety of animal species, and the new success will not only support equestrianism, but also help save endangered local horse breeds.
Perhaps in the future, the descendants of Zhuang Zhuang will become the ancestors of successful lines of Chinese racehorses.
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