Scientists clone cashmere goats in bid to increase wool production The first clone, a female kid called "Noori," meaning "light" in Arabic, on March 9 could spark breeding programmes across the region and mass production of the high-priced wool, Dr Riaz Ahmad Shah, a veterinarian in the animal biotechnology center of Sher-i-Kashmir University, said. Cashmere wool, particularly made into shawls, is a major source of income for Kashmir, generating about $80 million a year for the Indian-controlled portion of the disputed mountain state. A shawl can cost $200 in Kashmir and much more when sold abroad - a boon given the average salary of $800 a year for Kashmir's 10.2 million people. Shah and six other scientists took two years to clone Noori, using the relatively new "handmade" cloning technique involving only a microscope and a steady hand. We've standardised the procedure. Now it will take us half a year to produce another," said Dr. Maajid Hassan, another veterinarian who worked on the project, which was partly funded by the World Bank. The team already has started work on more clones among the university's herd of goats. "This is the cheapest, easier and less time-consuming" method of cloning, compared with conventional methods that use high-tech machinery and sometimes chemicals, Shah said. Noori is the first cashmere goat cloned by this method, though Shah earlier cloned a buffalo. They plan to spread the goat-cloning knowledge across the Indian Himalayas so others can grow their own goats. Eventually, Shah hopes to clone threatened species such as the critically endangered Kashmir stag, or hangul, the only surviving species of Asian red deer.