Introduction While conception rates following cervical insemination of synchronised ewes with fresh semen are generally around 60-70%, conception rates with frozen-thawed semen are unacceptably low (<20% generally). These poor conception rates following cervical insemination with frozen-thawed semen appear to stem from two inter-related factors which are additive in their negative impacts: (a) ...

Background: Artificial insemination (AI) has been used for increasing genetic potential of animals in production while application of AI has been restricted in buffalo due to low freezing ability and fertility of frozen-thawed buffalo spermatozoa. So improvement in buffalo sperm cryopreservation may enhance the breeding programs of this valuable farm animal. Semen processing is one of the major...

Aim Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is used frequently for luteal support in fresh in vitro fertilization cycles as it induces progesterone secretion from the ovaries after oocyte retrieval and modulates the endometrium for implantation in fresh cycles. In contrast, hCG is not usually used for the transfer of cryopreserved-thawed embryos in estrogen/progesterone replacement cycles because ov...

BACKGROUND Recently, human embryonic stem (hES) cells have become very important resources for basic research on cell replacement therapy and other medical applications. The purpose of this study was to test whether pluripotent hES cell lines could be successfully derived from frozen-thawed embryos that were destined to be discarded after 5 years in a routine human IVF-embryo transfer programme...

Results are presented of the effect of freezing followed by thawing (air and water immersion, both at environmental temperature) and cooking (traditional boiling in a covered pot) on quality profile (in terms of objective texture, colour, chlorophylls and pheophytins and sensory attributes) and structure of green beans (cv. Win). Freezing was carried out at three different rates by forced conve...

It has been claimed that artificial insemination (AI) of cows with frozen-thawed semen treated with commercially produced kits, HeiferplusTM (HP, in favour of female gender) and BullplusTM (BP, in favour of male gender), increases the birth chance of calves with desired sex ratio by at least 20–25% and pregnancy rates by at least 5–20%. Hence, this study was conducted to investigate the efficac...

In this study, the effect of heat shock on frozen-thawed blastocysts was evaluated using in vitro-produced (IVP) bovine embryos. In experiment 1, the effects of 6 h of heat shock at 41.0 C on fresh blastocysts were evaluated. HSPA1A expression as a reflection of stress was increased by heat shock (P < 0.05), but the expressions of the quality markers IFNT and POU5F1 were not affected. In experi...