Regional Research Centre on Foot and Mouth Disease, Department of Veterinary Microbiology, College of Veterinary Sciences, CCSHAU, Hisar, Haryana.
Abstracts of the papers presented at the 16th Annual Convention and International Symposium of Indian Virological Society on “Management of Vector-Borne Viruses” at International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru-502324, Hyderabad, India, February 7–10, 2006.
Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious and one of the world's most important viral diseases confronting dairy and livestock industry. The disease is widely distributed and endemic in India. Any strategy to control the disease requires knowledge of prevalence of various serotypes in a particular geographic region. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is funding a nation-level project on epidemiology of FMD with one of the centers in CCSHAU Hisar. The main objectives of the project are sero-typing of virus from various FMD outbreaks and conducting sero-monitoring studies at organised farms and villages in Haryana state. During the year April 2003 – March 2004, a total of 94 FMD outbreaks were recorded in 16 of the 19 districts of Haryana. Maximum outbreaks were recorded from the Hisar (31) followed by Kaithal, Karnal and Jind (8 each). Maximum outbreaks were recorded during September to December ‘03 (55 out of 94 outbreaks). Further, the maximum outbreaks involved cattle and buffalo simultaneously (62) followed by buffalo (12) and cattle (11) alone. A total of 239 samples were collected and processed for virus typing. Of the 239 clinical samples, 169 samples belonged to FMD virus type O, followed by A (37) and Asia1 (1). The results demonstrated predominance of FMD virus type O. The statistical analysis revealed a correlation coefficient of – 0.06 and –0.08 between maximum & minimum temperature (°C), respectively and number of outbreaks. Percent relative humidity showed a correlation coefficient of 0.17 (morning) and –0.05 (evening) with the number of outbreaks. Rainfall also showed a negative correlation with the incidence of FMD outbreaks (−0.34). A correlation coefficient of -0.47 was recorded between wind velocity and number of the outbreaks. However, none of the meteorological parameters show significant correlation with number of FMD outbreaks. A total of 1002 serum samples were processed for sero-epidemiological studies on the organized farms. The results of these studies are also presented.
