Dr. Prabhjinder Singh, M.V.Sc. scholar of Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana, Punjab has received Dr. Pratap V Reddy Outstanding Masters Research Award in Animal Nutrition- 2020. Award was presented by Prof. V. Padmanabha Reddy, Vice-Chancellor, Sri Venkateswara Veterinary University, Tirupati and Dr. A.K. Srivastava, Member (Animal Science), Agricultural Scientist Recruitment Board, New Delhi at the convocation of the Sri Venkateswara Veterinary University, Tirupati.
Dr. J.S. Hundal Professor, Department of Animal Nutrition, the major advisor of the researcher told that the recognised work was on the ‘Sustainable utilization of Aloe vera waste in the diet of lactating cows for improvement of milk production performance and reduction of carbon footprint’. This study demonstrates that feeding of Aloe vera waste at 20 g/kg dry matter intake to dairy cows increased milk production by 7% and decreased methane emission by 16%, which combinedly decreased methane production per unit of milk production substantially without health effects. Dr J.P.S. Gill, Director of Research congratulated the team for their hard work and further added that this was the first study to explore potential of Aloe vera waste in animal feeding. The feeding of Aloe vera waste could be beneficial for sustainable and cleaner milk production decreasing environmental burdens of residue disposal problems and ruminal methane production.
It is pertinent to mention that based on this research, an article has already been published in Elsevier ‘Journal of Cleaner Production’- one of the highest impact factor journal (9.28). Dr Udeybir Singh, Head Animal Nutrition told that vet varsity is doing extensive work in developing nutritional interventions/strategies of methane mitigation from ruminants for clean milk and meat production from years, this is a milestone to achieve our goal.
