China's first center for the transplant of cloned cow embryos has been established in Tangshan City in north China's Hebei Province, local sources confirmed.

The project is being conducted by the prestigious Chinese University of Agriculture in Beijing and the Lutai Business and Technology Development Zone in Tangshan, and will serve as a breeding base for cloned cows and bio-engineering service center in north China.

The two parties set up a bio-tech experiment base at a Lutai farm in 2001 and cloned in the following year a rare species of cattle that was on the verge of extinction.

Scientists acknowledge that thousands of the pure-blooded cattle had existed in Hebei Province in the 1970s, but cross-breeding with foreign breeds brought down the number of thoroughbreds.

To date, five more of the pure-blood cattle have been cloned at the base, using stem cell cloning technology to sustain their genetic resources.

In June this year, two genetically modified cloned calves were born on the Lutai farm and, according to scientists with the Beijing-based university, six more will be cloned by the end of the year.

(Xinhua News Agency August 18, 2004)