UNAIR NEWS – Livestock population is declining and causes meat scarcity. According to data acquired by General Directorate of Animal Husbandry, the population of beef cows in 2012 was 15 million, while in 2014 it went down to 14 million. The dairy cows’ population was 612 thousand and declined to 503 thousand in 2014.
Beef production in Indonesia in the past few years is concentrated in three regions of national livestock centers, East Java, Central Java and Soth Sulawesi. In 2011, East Java supplied beef production with 4.73 million and followed with Central Java with 1.94 million and South Sulawesi 983 thousand.
Inability of national production to meet the national demand caused the government to import beef from some countries. It indicates that our national production still cannot meet the target.
It was stated by Prof. Dr. I Komang Wiarsa Sardjana, drh, as the professor of Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (FKH) Universitas Airlangga (UNAIR). In his professorship affirmation, on Saturday, August 27, Prof. Komang presented scientific oration titled “Menuju Swasembada Daging di Indonesia dengan Tes Progesteron Paper Strip (Towards Indonesian Food Security with Paper Strip progesterone Test)”.
With problems in the field, the effective way to improve reproduction process of ruminants such as cows, is by improving the feeding management and mating management.
“The effort we can do is by improving the farming system in Indonesia, especially to achieve target of 12 months of birth interval, by detecting pregnancy early. Diagnostic of early pregnancy is needed after mating process to identify cattle which are not pregnant, so production loss time can be decreased as infertility can be decreased,” said Prof. Komang.
Prof. Komang suggested to analyze progesterone hormone with the diagnostic kit to detect pregnancy early in livestock. Progesteron paper strip can be performed by farmers as it is simple just like pregnancy test to human.
Previously, there was a method named Radio Immune Assay (RIA) and Enzyme Immuno Assay (EIA). In RIA, human needs to be careful as there is radiation involved and it is also expensive as EIA.
Meanwhile, this Progeteron paper strip kit is safe and can be easily performed by the farmers. In the future he hoped there is triple helix synergy (academician, industrials and government) to produce this progesterone paper strip massively. (*)
Author : Defrina Sukma S.
Editor : Binti Q. Masruroh
