Australian Merino sheep wool gets local in Tehri

Uttarakhand would now spin out the high quality Australian sheep wool in the hills and cater to the country’s textile industry that rely on the global market for the sheep wool. On 27 May, the test report of the sheep wool quality compiled by the state animal husbandry department, corroborated that the wool’s quality is similar to what the famed Merino sheep gives in Australia.

Secretary, animal husbandry department, Dr R Meenakshi Sundaram, said, “We had imported the Australian Merino sheep last year and the purebred yielded the same quality and this month the quantity of wool in Uttarakhand as in Australia.”

Sundaram added that the average fibre diameter is a very impressive 16.88 microns which is the most sought after by the textile industry across the world. Under the national livestock scheme last year, over imported 250 Merino sheep valued Rs 8.5 crore, are housed at a farm in the Tehri Garhwal district for breeding and improving the quality of wool. How important the development is can be understood from the fact that Indian textile industry imports 8,000 MT—valued over Rs 2,000 crore—of fine wool from global markets including Australia.

“With a very focused breeding program for the next seven years in Uttarakhand by linking it with the integrated livelihood projects, we can produce almost 50 per cent of the total requirement of the textile industry in India,” said Sundaram.

At the sheep farm a high quality germplasm has been made to available sheep breeders through use of modern artificial insemination in sheep and embryo transfer technology. The state government is aiming to offer sheep farming as a sustainable livelihood opportunity to the migrant population which has returned to Uttarakhand due to the covid-19 outbreak.