Research Projects

Cattle rearing forms the backbone for Indian economy with a milk production of around 210 million tonnes in 2020-21. Abortions in cattle due to infections are the major worrisome issues for farmers and to the Indian economy. Infectious bovine rhinotracheitis virus (IBRV) and Bovine viral diarrhoea virus (BVDV) are the two main concerns for abortions during 4-5 months of pregnancy. IBRV is a double stranded DNA virus whereas the BVDV is a single stranded positive sense virus. IBR is highly contagious disease that cause a wide range of clinical manifestations such as rhinitis, vulvovaginitis, tracheitis, enteritis, conjunctivitis, abortion, encephalitis and some fatal systemic infection in neonatal calves. BVDV is also highly contagious disease with a wide range of clinical manifestations such as enteric, respiratory and reproductive disease. Conventional diagnostic methods for detection of these pathogens are time taking, expensive and need technical expertise. LAMP-LFB is one that does not require a sophisticated instrument for amplification and the amplified product can be detected on lateral flow strip in a short time. The aim of the present study is to develop a cost effective rapid and reliable diagnostic assay for detection of IBRV and BVDV. The developed assay will be validated against real-time PCR. Further, there is no definitive report on epidemiological surveillance of IBRV and BVDV in India, especially from Telangana state. Effective control strategies can be devised only if the epidemiological surveillance reports are available and the variations in the viruses are known. Hence, the developed diagnostic test may be used for epidemiological surveillance of IBRV and BVDV in the Telangana state of India. In addition, the field level applications of the developed assay will be enumerated. The sequences of the IBRV and BVDV isolates will be compared against previously reported isolates and the variations will be evaluated. Understanding the variations in the sequence of antigenic regions can serve as a valuable resource for designing vaccines to protect the cattle against these economically significant infections.