Frankeston

The Frankeston Red is the first breed of cattle in the world created in the 21st Century by the scientist director of the Frankeston project, Dr. Francisco A. Restom Bitar; a specialist in human and animal genetics, and his team at the Bovine Genetic Experimental Center Remanso Caribe (Centro de Experimentación Genética Bovina Remanso Caribe in Spanish) located in the municipality of Arjona, Colombia, in the vicinity of Cartagena de Indias.

Restom started his genetic experiments in the middle of the year 1984, combining strategic and orderly in vivo chromosomes the native races x Cebu with semen of purebreds and their subsequent mating inter se to create the Frankeston breed, a cattle race biologically adapted for adverse conditions of the warm tropics, capable of producing more milk and more meat (dual purpose), surpassing not only the performance of every other breed, but also of crossed foreign cattle throughout the Caribbean region.

This breed was born from a desperate search for a sustainable and profitable solution to the repeated failure of foreign cattle to produce properly in the region due to the environmental conditions of the tropics, and their indiscriminate use in crosses carried out without control, without order, goals, or scientific studies throughout history.

It is a new biotype of dual-purpose bovine (milk and meat), more efficient and biologically resistant to heat, high solar radiation, and tropical diseases.

A breed created to lessen the ecological and economic cost that has represented Colombia's needs to import genetic material, incalculable losses due to productivity, and progressive deterioration of farmers in the society.

The creation of the Frankeston breed has been a long and complex work and has required the application of the scientific method, mathematics, planning, and execution.

In each of the stages of crosses to achieve genetic recombination that gave rise to the F1, F2, F3 and F4 and following, the scientist carried out biometric analysis, he confronted the development and general biological behavior of animals, and verified that the best genes of adaptation, milk and meat production, were inheriting from the different races and through gene interaction of them, had created the prototype which was planned based on the best phenotypic features of its predecessors, constituting, finally, the Frankeston race.

Once the prototype was obtained, the scientist proceeded to do successive chromosomal recombination inter se, in other words, to mate female and male Frankeston to form the F5, F6, etc.