Scientists get ready to send in the clones

Animal cloning technology at AgResearch is almost ready to roll out for commercial use - but the science is still waiting for international regulatory approval, says AgResearch scientist David Wells.

"We've demonstrated that nuclear transfer cloning in cattle does work," he said. "It works to a level where at least 10 per cent of embryos transferred to recipient cows result in viable cloned offspring."

That success rate was good enough for commercialisation in some high-value applications - such as elite breeding bull exports. But efficiency would need to improve before the technology could be used more widely - such as enhancing New Zealand's sheep flock.

Luckily for Wells and his team at Ruakura, time is on their side.

The commercial use of cloning is still being considered by the US Food and Drug Administration but many food industry experts believe approval is inevitable.

If the agency decides the technology is safe to enter the food chain, that would effectively give it the green light around most of the world.

Wells said the most immediate benefit of cloning would be the speed that desirable traits could be disseminated. Using natural selection, it takes several generations to breed traits through an animal population. But cloning can provide large numbers of identical elite breeding animals for farmers.

"So they get the quantum leaps in genetic gain and better productivity in their animals," Wells said.

Last week he presented a paper on the AgResearch cloning programme at the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation's conference on the Gold Coast.

The new technology represented a major opportunity for agriculture just with the cloning of conventional animals, he said, "but in the future you could accelerate that even further by cloning from elite embryos".

However, he said he did not see cloning ever completely replacing traditional breeding techniques (or artificial insemination).

The AgResearch cloning programme is entirely funded by the New Zealand Government through Forst (Foundation for Research, Science and Technology). The research team's finances were "relatively secure".

Cloning

* A cloned animal is a genetic copy of the original.

* It is not genetically modified.

* Cloning has the potential to rapidly speed up the genetic improvement of sheep and beef cattle.

* AgResearch scientists are successfully cloning elite bulls for breeding but are waiting on regulatory approval before commercialising the technology.