PAID ACCESS | Published on : 02-Mar-2026 | Pages: 79-88 | Doi : 10.37446/edibook202024/79-88
Livestock reproduction is a key determinant of agricultural productivity, food security, and rural livelihoods, with cattle and buffalo being central to India’s dairy economy and cultural heritage. India, the world’s largest milk producer with 239.30 million tonnes annually, relies heavily on its vast bovine population, yet productivity per animal remains low compared to global standards. One major constraint is the inability to predetermine the sex of offspring, since both natural breeding and artificial insemination with unsorted semen yield an almost equal probability of male and female calves. For dairy farmers, female calves are far more valuable for herd replacement and milk production, while surplus male calves often have limited utility, reduced economic value, and raise ethical concerns in modern dairying. The advent of semen sexing technologies has been recognized as a game changer, enabling farmers and breeding organizations to preselect offspring sex, improve herd composition, accelerate genetic progress, and align production with economic goals. While dairy farmers benefit from more female calves, beef farmers like males for better growth and carcass yield. Conventional semen sexing techniques such as density gradients or immunological separation lacked accuracy and although flow cytometry introduced high precision (>90%), it remains costly, technically demanding, and is associated with reduced conception rates, particularly challenging in buffaloes due to minimal differences in X and Y chromosome DNA content. Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are reshaping semen sexing by integrating machine learning, deep learning and computer vision into semen sexing systems, thereby automating sperm classification, enhancing fertility predictions and optimizing operational efficiency. These AI-driven innovations hold the promise of making semen sexing more accurate, affordable and scalable, thus offering a practical and farmer-friendly solution to boost livestock productivity and sustainability in India and globally.
Artificial Intelligence, Semen sexing, flowcytometry, CASA, Sperm sorting, Sex pre selection
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