More people globally depend on the water buffalo than any other domesticated species, and as the most closely related domesticated species to cattle they can provide important insights into the shared evolutionary basis of domestication. Here, we sequence the genomes of 79 water buffalo across seven breeds and compare patterns of between breed selective sweeps with those seen for 294 cattle genomes representing 13 global breeds. The genomic regions under selection between cattle breeds significantly overlap regions linked to stature in human genetic studies, with a disproportionate number of these loci also shown to be under selection between water buffalo breeds. Investigation of potential functional variants in the water buffalo genome identifies a rare example of convergent domestication down to the same mutation having independently occurred and been selected for across domesticated species. Cross-species comparisons of recent selective sweeps can consequently help identify and refine important loci linked to domestication.

While reviewing present status of mastitis in India, results of investigations from periurban dairy farms on epidemiological, clinical manifestations, diagnosis, bacterial isolation, in vitro drug sensitivity, and treatment of subclinical mastitis have been presented. Mastitis, on account of its causing serious wastage and undesirable milk quality, is emerging as a major challenge among the others (like breeding improvement, nutrition management, control of infectious, tick-borne, blood, and internal parasitic diseases) in dairy development of tropics. Subclinical mastitis was found more important in India (varying from 10-50% in cows and 5-20% in buffaloes) than clinical mastitis (1-10%). The incidence was highest in Purebred Holsteins and Jerseys and lowest in local cattle and buffaloes. An investigation on 250 animals from periurban farms indicated that the monsoon season was more prone to subclinical mastitis than summer or winter, prevalence increased with higher lactation number and animals in 4th-5th month of lactation were found more susceptible (59.49%), hind quarters were found more affected (56.52%) than fore quarters (43.47%). The factors like herd size, agro climatic conditions of the region, variations in sociocultural practices, milk marketing, literacy level of the animal owner, system of feeding, and management were found important affecting the incidence of subclinical mastitis. Comparison of efficacy of different diagnostic techniques for subclinical mastitis, such as modified California mastitis test (MCMT), bromo thymol blue (BTB), modified whiteside test, trypsin inhibition test, milk pH, and electric conductivity indicated MCMT to be most sensitive (95.16%) and specific (98.02%) test. The antimicrobial susceptibility test revealed that most of the bacterial strains (gram positive, gram negative, and mixed) isolated from subclinical mastitis milk samples, were highly sensitive to enrofloxacin 53.91%, least sensitive to oxytetracycline 17.39% and ampicillin 7.83%, and resistant to streptomycin. The therapy with enrofloxacin and nimesulide was found more efficacious (92.30%) in treating subclinical mastitis cows. It was concluded that consideration of socioecological factors for mastitis control in periurban area would help to reduce the cost of mastitis control in clean milk production.

The domestic water buffalo ( Bubalus bubalis ) makes a major contribution to the global agricultural economy in the form of milk, meat, hides, and draught power. The global water buffalo population is predominantly found in Asia, and per head of population more people depend upon the buffalo than on any other livestock species. Despite its agricultural importance, there are comparatively fewer genomic and transcriptomic resources available for buffalo than for other livestock species. We have generated a large-scale gene expression atlas covering multiple tissue and cell types from all major organ systems collected from three breeds of riverine water buffalo (Mediterranean, Pandharpuri and Bhadawari) and used the network analysis tool Graphia Professional to identify clusters of genes with similar expression profiles. Alongside similar data, we and others have generated for ruminants as part of the Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes Consortium; this comprehensive transcriptome supports functional annotation and comparative analysis of the water buffalo genome.

Milk production data from Holstein 3 Zebu cows in small farms (2.4 cows per farm on average) in Maharashtra, India, followed by Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation (BAIF), an Indian non-governmental organisation, were analysed to evaluate the impact of simplified milk-recording systems. The aim was to investigate, in developing tropical areas, less-costly protocols compared with the one currently implemented at BAIF, used as a reference. The latter can be considered an 'AT2' protocol with the recording made by specialised technicians at 2-week intervals. The simplified protocols were simulated from an initial data file by sampling test days according to each protocol. Bias and accuracy on the 305-day cow milk production and on the resulting reliability of the estimated breeding value of bulls were the criteria used in the comparison with the reference protocol. One type of simplified protocol considered an increase in the interval between two tests to at least 4 and up to 8 weeks. Another alternative studied corresponded to the situation where milk yield information measured by the farmer is collected by the artificial insemination technicians themselves when visiting a farm. This could be an option in the case of very small herd sizes (two or three cows). The results suggest that simplifying the current milk-recording protocol leads to a clear decrease in accuracy of estimating 305-day cow production but it has a limited effect on the reliability of bull proofs. No economic comparison was carried out, but the results strongly suggest that properly managed simplified milk-recording schemes could permit a substantial decrease of costs of milk recording per cow without damaging the efficiency of progeny testing in tropical areas with small herd size. Moreover, with the proposed simplified milk-recording protocols, up to three to four times more bulls could be tested with the same number of records.

Vitiligo is a multifactorial acquired depigmenting disorder. Recent insights into the molecular mechanisms driving the gradual destruction of melanocytes in vitiligo will likely lead to the discovery of novel therapies, which need to be evaluated in animal models that closely recapitulate the pathogenesis of human vitiligo. In humans, vitiligo is characterized by a spontaneous loss of functional melanocytes from the epidermis, but most animal models of vitiligo are either inducible or genetically programmed. Here, we report that acquired depigmentation in water buffalo recapitulates molecular, histological, immunohistochemical, and ultrastructural changes observed in human vitiligo and hence could be used as a model to study vitiligo pathogenesis and facilitate the discovery and evaluation of therapeutic interventions for vitiligo.