One of the advantages of embryo transfer is the ability to biopsy the embryos in an attempt to diagnose different genetic traits or determine gender. The ability to do so has existed for several years and the amount of genetic information that can be realized is ever expanding as geneticists learn more and tests become available to identify particular alleles.

By now, most people in the breeding industry know what embryo transfer (ET) is however there is still a little confusion or misconception. I would say that the increased use and knowledge of in vitro fertilization, popularly referred to as ICSI (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection), has led to some of this confusion. We hear people interchanging the words embryo and egg as if they are the same thing. Let’s take a minute to draw a simple distinction between the two procedures.