Dr. Bart van den Berg
Dr. Bart van den Berg, the owner of Barex Biochemical Products, is involved in research, production, and sales of chemical components used to make liquid media for preservation of domestic animal semen for Artificial Insemination (AI). Barex Biochemical Products was founded in 2006 and has introduced a number of new products in the area of animal reproduction.
Working with several partners, Dr. van den Berg has developed new swine semen extenders and is now working on more advanced swine and rabbit semen extenders. He says, “For swine semen extenders, the focus is on long term extenders that give a higher farrowing rate and litter size, plus a higher preservation capacity.” He is also working on a long term extender for rabbit semen.
Dr. van den Berg first used HT products around 2009 when IMV Technologies loaned him an IVOS to help with his research endeavors. Now, he uses the new generation CEROS II for motility analysis of swine and rabbit sperm. For developing new semen preservation media, he says “the use of computer-assisted semen analysis is absolutely needed as a tool to evaluate the potential of new preservation media.”
When asked what features of the CEROS II he likes, Dr. van den Berg replied,
“Apart from the outstandingly well-written manuals, there are two features that are superior: first is setting up analysis parameters along with the Live Configuration function and second is the database capability. The Live Configuration makes it possible to analyze rabbit semen in the best way and this makes the CEROS II unbeatable. It’s the Ferrari among the CASA systems that are available.”
Dr. Bart van den Berg
Ph.D. in Biochemistry & Genetics
Ph.D. in Biochemistry & Genetics
https://www.barex-biochem.nl
He continues, “Rabbit semen is very difficult to analyze since it contains a lot of prostatic particles. The CEROS II is perfectly suited to do this job by virtue of its interactive setup capabilities. Plus, the database features make ‘research life’ so much easier. I can store all kinds of information in various ways and still easily retrieve the data that I want to go over again. And once you know the software, it’s a joy to work with.”
When asked for any last words, he said, “I am sure that there is a big market to develop when it comes to rabbit semen analysis. All the more so, since due to the presence of debris, sperm cell concentration cannot be assessed using densitometry. For artificial insemination, the number of sperm cells to be inseminated will become more and more important with the use of more advanced extenders.”
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