The Central Avian Research Institute (CARI), a premier Research Institute in Asian continent, ever since its inception in 1979, has played a vital role in transforming country’s backyard poultry farming into a vibrant and highly commercialized poultry industry by providing technological support and professional manpower. The institute offers superior genetic stocks of quails, turkeys, Guinea fowls, indigenous fowls, ducks, broilers and layers along with package of nutritional, management and healthcare practices; and processing technologies for eggs and poultry meat to acceleration the above services institute has established Agribusiness Incubation Centre (ABI) in January 1, 2016.

Main Objectives:

• To establish few more agri-business incubator centers as leaders in NARS for providing technology, skill up grading and incubation leading to promotion of viable enterprises and generation of employment opportunities to entrepreneurs.
• To undertake last mile scale-up from pilot level of value chain in collaboration with stakeholders.
• To impart training and capacity building to prospective entrepreneurs in agri-business ecosystem

Aims:

• Promotion of poultry and allied business through commercialization of technologies.
• Skill development of entrepreneurs through hands-on-training.
• Preparation of DPRs for entrepreneurs for seeking loans.
• Consultancy services on poultry farming and allied activities.
• Ensuring of self-sustainability of the ABI Centre.

Objectives:

• To study the change in basic behavioral components as a consequence of adopting low cost technology and value addition in animal husbandry and allied sector.
• To assess the differential effect of adoption of low cost technology across different categories of farmers and promotion of paravets.
• To study the different training modules for improving the adoption level of tribal and non-tribal farmers in animal husbandry sectors and extent of veterinary extension services.
• To study the constraints faced by tribal and non-tribal farmers for adoption of different AH practices and suggest measures to mitigate the problems.
• Documentation of traditional knowledge’s and establishment of market linkages for tribal/resource constrained farmers and FPOs.


Major Expected Outputs of the project:

Ensuring livelihood security for tribal and landless farmers through low cost technologies on animal husbandry and allied sectors. And identification of basic and fundamental issues for future research.

Newcastle disease (ND) is one of the major causes inflicting great economic losses to the poultry sector. The native chicken breeds, which usually possess resistance to many common poultry diseases, are affected by ND virus resulting in high mortality in small scale poultry farming. Additionally, this has become a potential threat to commercial poultry units in the vicinity. The current proposal will help in generating fundamental information on pathways and genes involved in resistance/susceptibility against NDV in different chicken breeds. The information may be utilized in designing the breeding plan for augmenting resistance to NDV and/or developing ND resistant chicken lines along with optimizing the production performance. The molecular data generated out of the work may also help in identifying the SNPs in candidate genes which may help in enhancing resistance to NDV through MAS. The lncRNAs identified in the proposed project will be of vital importance and may be used as therapeutic targets for limiting the pathogenesis caused by NDV. They may also serve as important biomarkers for susceptibility/ resistance to NDV and therefore may help in identifying the resistant birds for creating an NDV resistant flock. The lncRNAs may, therefore, serve as an important tool for enhancing host resistance and also for controlling NDV.

Objectives:

• To study the immunological differences in indigenous (Aseel, Nicobari) and commercial chicken (White Leghorn)
• To carry our RNA sequencing of lymphoid organ (spleen) in Aseel and WLH breeds at 2 and 6 dpi with lentogenic (Lasota) or velogenic strain of NDV.
• To elucidate differentially expressed genes across breeds in spleen at different time points


Key questions to be addressed:

• Does difference in disease resistance patterns between indigenous and exotic ecotypes exists?
• Does the lnc RNAs play a critical role in host pathogen interaction during Newcastle disease (ND) infection?


Expected output:

Long non coding RNAs (lncRNAs) contribute in various biological functions. Identification and characterization of lncRNAs in ND resistance and susceptibility will have a big impact. These lncRNAs could have clinical significance also. However, the traditional methods to treat ND are limited. Hence, we are proposing new method to identify lncRNAs which are expressing during ND infection. The molecular pathways and DE genes identified will also be helpful in identifying genes / SNPs involved in NDV resistance/ susceptibility and developing the strategies for augmenting resistance against NDV. The pathways and differentially expressing genes involved in NDV resistance/ susceptibility will be identified specially in indigenous chicken breeds for which no reports of transcriptome analysis is available. The information generated will help in understanding the host defence against ND which would further help in developing the strategies to control ND in poultry. We expect to identify and characterize novel lncRNAs which are contributing in the host response towards ND infection. These novel lncRNAs undoubtedly will help in the ongoing research in the field of ND particularly in indigenous chicken breeds. Collectively, the proposed work has the potential to develop tool for selection of chicken breed resistant against ND infection or designing breeding plan to develop the stocks having better resistance against NDV.​