Improving bovine embryo quality and yield with novel media

Embryo transfer is one of the tools a livestock producer can utilize to rapidly increase the genetic gainwithin the herd overcome low pregnancy rates during physiological stress or leverage high qualityfemales by producing multiple offspring per female (rather than 1/year).The ability to transfer fresh orfrozen embryos is important in dairy and beef cattle reproduction as well as in sheep goats deer andhumans. Embryos can be produced in a petri dish in a process called in vitro production. Unfortunatelythis is a very expensive tool in part because of the low production (~9% of eggs result in a live calf) in thisfixed cost production system.That means that it costs approximately the same to produce 9 embryos as50 embryos. Membrane Protective Technologies' (MPTI) technology GameteGuard® is poised toimprove these economics to the benefit of dairy farmer and beef producers.In this Phase I research proposal MPTI will use its proprietary technology comprised of organicplant-derived antioxidants called GameteGuard® to improve the yield of high quality blastocysts(embryos) in an in vitro production system. Collaboration with Colorado State University allows MPTI toassess the benefits of our technology in a well-defined embryo production system. The production ofembryos requires multiple steps transferring the developing embryo into different media. The variousmedia simulate the transition from the site of fertilization in the female (ovary and fallopian tube) to thesite of maturation (uterus).MPTI will examine the benefit of various GameteGuard® formulations ineach of the four steps ofin vitro embryo production.Preliminary research wherein GameteGuard® was added ONLY to the first or first and secondmedium (<16% of the total process) resulted 30 to 150% improvement in blastocyst yield as comparedto the control(depending on treatment).Perhaps more importantly the quality of blastocystsimproved. One treatment resulted in 25% more grade 1 blastocysts (the best quality).This iseconomically important because only high quality blastocysts can be successfully frozen.These dataindicate that GameteGuard® addition will substantially improve the rate of oocyte transition to highquality freezable embryos. This phase I project will measure the impact of adding GameteGuard® toeach of the incubation media in a step followed by quantifying the combined effects in Phase II. Theultimate goal of these research is optimization of a system to produce high quality frozen embryos (themost economically important product) via supplementation with GameteGuard®.The potential economic impact of this low cost technology is eclipsed by the potential gain byimproving the embryo yield from 8% to 12%a potential $14000 benefit per 100 oocytes in high qualitybeef cattle. Furthermore the economic upside of developing a technology that serves as a platform forother species is immense.This project is responsive to USDA strategic goal 2 objective 2.2 by improving the competitivenature of USDA agriculture and FY research priority 1 by improving production efficiency ofagriculturally important animals.