Born and brought up in the rural area of Thai Thuy of Thai Binh province, doctor of biology Do Van Thu was determined to study when he was a poor pupil who was aware that ‘Studying well is to help eliminate hunger and reduce poverty for people in the future’

He successfully defended his university thesis on ‘Study on the supplement of minerals for dairy cows’ at the Agriculture College 1 in 1983. After out of the university, he worked for the Institute of Biology Technology, under the National Centre for Natural Sciences and Technology. Facing the fact that Vietnam had to import cow and pig frozen sperm in 1984, which was really costly, he and his colleagues succeeded in conducting a State-level research on pig and cow sperm producing techniques, which helps reduce import spendings and meet the domestic demand.

After surveys, Mr Thu found that Vietnam is abundant with hilly and mountainous land where grass naturally grows and goats like grass. He thought that goats are the ‘dairy cows’ of poor people in rural areas, especially in the hilly and mountainous areas. However, due to poor performance of goat strain selection, multiplication and preservation with undue attention, goat breeding failed to bring about high economic effectiveness. He started to study and successfully defended a doctorate thesis on ‘Sperm biology and goat sperm preservation technology to develop goat breeding in Vietnam.’ The thesis dealing with the diluting process to preserve sperm at five degrees celcius and techniques for production of frozen goat sperm in liquid nitrogen at 196 celcius has helped ease the lack of sperm of good goats.

So far, his thesis has shown efficiency and been applied by Son Tay Centre for Goat and Rabbit Studies to preserve the sperm of good male goats which were imported from India or France and have become old now.

Thanks to his contributions to science, Mr Thu was presented certificates of merit by Hanoi’s Youth Union, the National Centre for Natural Sciences and Technology and Hanoi People’s Committee.

By TRINH SON

 

---