Effect of Supplementation of Leukemia Inhibitory Factor on in Vitro Development of Buffalo Embryos

The effect of supplementation of recombinant LIF in the embryo culture medium, effect of oviductal epithelial cells and Vero cells co-culture on subsequent embryo development were studied during in vitro culture of buffalo embryos. Oocytes collected from the slaughter house ovaries, were matured and fertilized in vitro. The presumptive zygotes were cultured in four different groups as control-group I, with rLIF-group II, co-culture with buffalo oviductal epithelial cellsgroup III and with Vero cells-group IV. There was no significant difference in the cleavage rate in all the four groups, however, development of expanded blastocysts was found to be significantly higher in all the treatment groups (13.58 to 16.57%) when compared with control (9.80%), but there was no significant difference noticed among the treatment groups. The percentage of hatched blastocysts were significantly higher in group II (10.86%) when compared with that of control (5.38%) group. From the present study it is concluded that supplementation of LIF 100ng/ml in the culture media improved the hatching rate in blastocysts.