Chinese scientists produce world’s first pigs cloned entirely by robot

The team at Nankai University in Tianjin says that removing humans from the time-consuming and complicated process has helped improve the success rate

The technique could benefit Chinese agriculture and consumers and help reduce the country’s dependence on imported breeding stock

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The robotic technique has a higher success rate than manual cloning. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 6:00am, 2 Jun 2022Updated: 12:36pm, 2 Jun 2022

Researchers in China say they have developed a process to clone pigs entirely through the use of robots – a development that may help the world’s largest pork consumer reduce its reliance on imported breeding pigs.

In March, a surrogate mother gave birth to seven cloned piglets at the College of Artificial Intelligence at Nankai University in Tianjin.

“Each step of the cloning process was automated, and no human operation was involved,” Liu Yaowei, a member of the team that developed the system, said.

Liu added the use of robots had also increased the success rate of the cloning process because they were less likely to damage the cells while performing the intricate cloning process – a problem that scientists say has held back the wider use of the technique.

If it works, this automated system could be developed into a cloning kit that any company or research institution can buy to free scientists from labour-intensive, time-consuming manual cloning, said Pan Dengke, a former researcher with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences who helped produce China’s first cloned pig in 2005.

Pan, the founder of Clonorgan Biotechnology in Chengdu, said he used to create more than 1,000 clones by hand every day, a process that was so time-consuming and complicated that he developed back pain as a result.

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Chinese scientists produce world’s first pigs cloned entirely by robot

The team at Nankai University in Tianjin says that removing humans from the time-consuming and complicated process has helped improve the success rate The technique could benefit Chinese agriculture and consumers and help reduce the country’s dependence on imported breeding stock

The team at Nankai University in Tianjin says that removing humans from the time-consuming and complicated process has helped improve the success rate

The technique could benefit Chinese agriculture and consumers and help reduce the country’s dependence on imported breeding stock