The Use of Breeding Biotechnologies in Romanian Livestock

Abstract For livestock holdings, the breeding sector is the most important and the level of breeding technical indicators is the path to profit or loss. It can be said that in animal husbandry, this is the sector with the highest degree of technicality and that is why there were made efforts in research to create modern techniques that allow the man to control all these phenomena and the level of indicators to not depend only on the capabilities of the bull, boar, ram and rooster, etc. The aim of this paper is to provide a view upon the use of breeding biotechnologies in Romanian livestock. Based on the data of National Agency for Improvement and Reproduction in Animal Husbandry were analyzed the dynamics of artificial insemination, in species of livestock contained in Official Control of Production (COP). The dynamics of embryo transfer in cattle, in Romania, in the period 2000-2012 is based on data reported by the Romanian Association of Embryo Transfer (A.R.E.T.) to the European Association of Embryo Transfer (A.E.T.E.). Although until 1990 agricultural research and the system of state enterprises favored the application of these biotechnologies, after 1990, the highly divided property in agriculture and the lack of organization of farmers in associative forms resulted in the restricted use of these modern techniques. Regarding the use A.I., in the analyzed period, the total number of A.I. decreased by 55%, due to the changes that have occurred since 1990, with the restructuring that occurred in livestock (reducing the number of large farms and the continue decline of the number of females) and in the national network of breeding and selection of animals. In Romania, due to high costs, embryo transfer is not a method currently used and accessible to ordinary farmers, being used mostly to obtain the bulls used in artificial insemination network or the cows as steers mothers.