Two diagnostic kits developed by Indian Council of Agricultural Research under the ‘Make in India’ initiative, namely the Bluetongue sandwich ELISA (sELISA) and the Japanese Encephalitis lgM ELISA kit for the control of Swine and Detection of Antigen, were released by Atul Chaturvedi, Secretary Department of Animal Husbandry & Dairying and Dr. T. Mahopatra, Secretary DARE and DG, ICAR at Krishi Bhawan on Tuesday.
This indigenous technology will not just help save foreign exchange as the newly developed kits cost ten times lesser than the imported ones but also has the potential to earn foreign exchange, reads a press release.
Addressing the gathering, Trilochan Mohapatra briefed about the main characteristics of the two Kits. Talking about the Japanese Encephalitis (JE) ELISA Kit (IgM) for Swine, Dr. Mohapatra mentioned that the JE is a re-emerging viral zoonotic disease leading to death of children every year in the country.
The kit developed by the ICAR-Indian Veterinary Research Institute is really helpful for assessing the active infection of JE virus in the swine population which predicts the outbreak of JE in the humans. As compared to the commercial kit available in the market at a price of Rs. 52,000; the ICAR-IVRI developed is available for the farmers at a minimal price of Rs. 5,000 only. The Director General mentioned that each kit is meant for testing around 45 samples.