The Yangling Agricultural High-Tech Pilot Zone in northwest China's Shaanxi Province has become one of the world's major bases for breeding cloned sheep.

The Northwest University of Agriculture and Forestry Science and Technology (NUAFST) in Yangling, which is 90 km from the provincial capital of Xi'an, began animal embryo research in the 1970s. The first two goats cloned from fresh embryo were born at the university in 1980.

The university built its embryo laboratory in 1984. In 1995, the world's largest group of cloned goats, numbered at 45, were born one after another at the university, due to the work of a research group led by professor Zhang Yong.

The world's first batch of goats cloned from cells from an adult goat; the goats, named Yangyang and Yuanyuan, were born at the university in June 2000. By last February, Yangyang has a family with cloned goats in four generations.

"All these achievements have independent intellectual property rights. For instance, the technology for cloning Yuanyuan and Yangyang is nothing in common with that of the technology for creating Dolly. China gained its experience after repeated experiments and failure on more than 100 occasions," Zhang said.

(Xinhua News Agency September 20, 2004)