Man must utilize all the possible resources for his survival in view of the global population explosion. Cross breeding is one of the oldest methods for increasing the productivity, if adopted sensibly. The crossbreeding of domestic cattle without proper health cover and nutritional support leads to mongrelization, a senseless waste of both the precious germplasms assets and liabilities. The innate disease resistance, heat tolerance, cold tolerance and performance capabilities do differ with breeds performing under various environmental stresses.
As a premise it must be said that the word "buffalo" is used rather loosely and thus created considerable confusion. The North American buffalo (or bison) is more similar to the Zebu indicus cattle with regard to the karyotype (n2=60). The African buffaloes are Syncerus Caffer nannus (Congo Buffalo), (2n=54) and Syncerus Caffer caffer (African Buffalo) (2n=52). The wild Indian buffaloes are still untamed and live mostly in the forests of Madhya Pradesh and Assam. These wild free living buffaloes are known as "Arni".
All these aforesaid buffaloes are not domesticated and consequently crossbreeding is almost impossible, although several experimental hybridization studies were undertaken in Canada on American Bison and taurine cattle. The experiment had to be discontinued due to hybrid male sterility.
The geographical division between the Riverine and the Swamp buffaloes is assumed to be Patkai, Barail, and Arakan-Yoma mountain ranges of Burma. The buffaloes to the West of those mountains are supposed to be River types and those distributed to the East of these mountains (far East) are believed to be Swamp types. All the descript and non-descript South Indian buffaloes, resemble Swamp buffaloes in external features, low milk yield and small body size. Even the keryotypes of Orissa buffaloes are similar to the 49 chromosomes of Swamp buffaloes (Bidar et al.,1986) Therefore, the demarcation line between the distribution of River and Swamp breeds within India (north-south) is yet to be established by cCytotaxonominists, based on the karyotypes. All the non-descript or descript north Indian buffaloes studied by me had 50 chromosomes of River type. (Chakrabarthi & Benjamin 1980).
Chromosomal aberrations (deletions) are more common in buffaloes wallowing or drinking water polluted with pesticide factory effluents. This may account for the sterility among the affected buffaloes.
The hypothesis that the genome (50 chromosomes) of river buffaloes is accommodated in the 48 chromosomes of the Swamp requires experimental verification, but fortunately, the River buffalo (2n=50) and the Swamp buffalo (2n=48) crosses are fertile despite the 49 chromosomes in F1 and F2 offspring. However, the River types( Murrah, Nili Ravi) males are usually reluctant to mate with Swamp she-buffaloes, unless the two breeds are raised together from calf-hood in the same environment. This sex behavioral problem can be circumvented by inseminating the Swamp she-buffalo artificially.
Riverine males are usually imported from India or Pakistan to the other South-east Asian countries such as Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Burma and Indonesia. The wall-eyed (colorless or "blue" eye) characteristic is considered to be the trademark of the Nili Ravi breed. All their offspring have wall-eyes. The tight curled horns are preferred in the River types. White markings on the head (muzzle, forehead) feet (pasterns, fetlock) and white tail switches are also considered as markers and breed characteristics of the three popular River types.
There is a general improvement among crossbreeds in all the productive traits (birth weight, age at maturity, age at first calving,reduced intercalving period, duration of heat, gestation ) over the native Swamp buffaloes, provided they are well fed and given adequate health care.
The milk and meat potentials improved in the crossbreeds (River X Swamp) when the crossbreeding programs were implemented in Malaysia and Philippine herds. The crossbreeds need better feeding to express the gains in their production. Poor and marginal farmers lack motivation for more milk production, because of the high feed costs, buffaloes being for them triple purpose animals: work, milk and meat. Meat is considered a by-product after fully utilizing the buffalo for work (paddy cultivation or draft) and incidentally for milk (2-3 liters/day).
Local people appeared to be satisfied with this small amount of milk usually produced by the Swamp buffaloes for domestic consumption and for rearing the suckling calf, irrespective of sex. The crossbreed (Murrah X Swamp) needs to be well fed to yield more milk for sale. If dairying is the main motivation, one should be able to invest more on the feed costs and management.
In view of the high overhead costs involved, Governmental organizations should come forward to launch well designed cross breeding programs to reap the benefits and distribute the gains thus achieved to the public. The pilot studies on cross breeding should be able to study the combined ability of the 3 productive traits in the environmental background of the developing countries where the crossbreds are meant to perform.
Charan Chantalakhana (1979) critically discussed the beneficial effects of crossbreeding of buffaloes in Southeast Asian countries.
The demand for milk and meat from large parts of the world can be met by formulation of cross-breeding guidelines. Scientific cross-breeding should not remain as an unexploited natural resource any longer or end up in a meaningless haphazard mixture of grades or breeds.