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The world's smallest cattle breed, nearly extinct in its Indian home, is at the centre of a controversy involving Scotland's Roslin Institute. DNA from the Vechur cow was allegedly smuggled out of India to the Edinburgh institute — where Dolly the sheep was cloned — to be used in patentable research on transgenic animals.

The claims were made by Vandana Shiva, a prominent conservationist and president of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology. They were denied by the Roslin Institute. “We have no programme to preserve germplasm from UK or foreign breeds. We don't understand what this is about,” says assistant director Harry Griffin.

“I am yet to find out the truth in these allegations,” says Moti Lal Madan, director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). “Two weeks ago we asked the Roslin Institute for comments and we are awaiting their reply.”

The Vechur, no bigger than a large goat, needs little food, thanks to its size — typically 90cm tall and 1m long — but its milk is very rich in fat. Tolerant of heat and resistant to most diseases including foot-and-mouth, it has been the focus of ICAR-funded genetic research in Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) at Thrissur since 1989, when only eight could be found for study. Today there are about 100 on the university farm.

University authorities say that Roslin scientists asked to do research on the cattle in 1994, but that these requests were denied. Shiva alleges that germplasm was later smuggled to the UK by KAU scientists. She also claims that Roslin's web site, a year ago, contained 36 references to its work on the Vechur cow and that these were erased after reports of smuggling appeared in the Indian media.

Dr Sosamma Iype, head of animal genetics and breeding at KAU, says the charges are baseless. She also denies that she spent time at Roslin during 1996, “though our students have been sent there for training,” she says. At a press conference this month, KAU vice-chancellor Shyamasundaram Nair denied any wrongdoing by KAU scientists and said that if Roslin had the Vechur germplasm it might have come from other sources.

India's 28 breeds of cattle and 200 million-strong herd are a gold-mine of germplasm, according to Sher Ali, an animal geneticist at the National Institute of Immunology in New Delhi. “We never bother to study their valuable genes until somebody steals them to exploit commercially,” he says.

Madan says, however, “If anyone wants a disease-resistant gene it can be found in many other breeds in India.”