Indian Journal of Dairy Science
The Indian Journal of Dairy Science is the scientific and technical journal of the Indian Dairy Association, published bi-monthly from IDA House in R. K. Puram, New Delhi. Known by the abbreviation IJDS, it carries the print ISSN 0019-5146 and the online ISSN 2454-2172, and it exists to do one job well: to disseminate research findings to the dairy community in India and abroad. Its pages carry research articles, reviews, short communications, abstracts and other material pertaining to the dairy industry, organised under heads such as dairy processing, animal production and reproduction, and dairy economics and extension. By 2025 the journal had reached Volume 78, a numbering that testifies to a publishing life measured in decades alongside the organised Indian dairy sector itself.
A publication of the Indian Dairy Association
The journal's publisher gives it its authority. The Indian Dairy Association, established in 1948, is described as the apex body of the dairy industry in India, headquartered in New Delhi. Its membership spans dairy cooperatives, multinational companies, corporate bodies, private institutions, educational institutions and government and public sector units, and it works closely with dairy producers, professionals and planners, scientists and educationists. Past presidents of the association have included figures central to Indian dairying, among them Dr Verghese Kurien. A journal published by such a body is not a commercial venture chasing readership; it is the research record of an industry speaking to itself, and the Indian Journal of Dairy Science is presented by the association explicitly as its scientific and technical journal.
Frequency, format and subscription
IJDS is a bi-monthly journal, publishing six issues a year. The association's subscription information prices an annual subscription in India at Rs. 500, with a price per copy of Rs. 85, while the overseas annual subscription is listed at US$25, with mailing charges applied as actuals and additional charges for courier or registered post. Those modest figures reflect the journal's institutional character: it is priced for circulation among members, libraries and working scientists rather than as a commercial newsstand product. The journal appears in both print and online forms, as its two ISSNs indicate, and the association publishes the contents of current issues — including the November–December 2025 issue, Volume 78, Number 6 — through its website for the dairy community to consult.
Dairy processing research
Dairy processing is one of the journal's standing sections, and a single recent issue shows its flavour. The November–December 2025 number carried work on a gluten-free version of gulab jamun made with kodo and foxtail millet, on optimising the mass and cooking time of rasogolla in an indirectly heated conveying machine, and on the effects of phytosterols on the physico-chemical, sensory, fatty-acid and microstructural properties of processed cheese spread. Other papers examined oat milk in probiotic yogurt, microencapsulated galgal essential oil as a natural preservative in ghee, a standardised protocol for synbiotic milk pudding, sandesh sweetened with monk fruit, and the growth and acidification behaviour of thermophilic Lactobacillus isolated from the traditional sweet curd of West Bengal. Traditional Indian dairy products, studied with modern methods, are a signature of the journal.
Animal production and reproduction
The journal's second great territory is the animal itself. Its animal production and reproduction section publishes research on the health, breeding and feeding of dairy cattle. In the same 2025 issue, readers found a study of the prevalence and haematobiochemical profile of resistant mastitis in dairy cows around Salem district in Tamil Nadu, work on recombinant FSH superstimulation before ovum pick-up to improve blastocyst production in zebu cattle, and an investigation of varying levels of aflatoxin B1 and its ameliorant on feed intake and nutrient digestibility in crossbred lactating cows. These are practical, field-connected subjects — disease, fertility and feed safety are the daily economics of Indian milk production — and their presence keeps the journal rooted in the realities of the farm as well as the laboratory.
Dairy economics and extension
Completing the journal's structure is dairy economics and extension, the section concerned with people, organisations and markets. A representative recent paper compared group dynamics across the developmental stages of dairy-based farmer producer organisations in Karnataka — a subject that belongs as much to rural sociology and cooperative management as to animal science. This breadth is one of the journal's defining strengths. Indian dairying rests on millions of small producers organised through cooperatives and, increasingly, farmer producer organisations, so research on how those institutions function is as important to the sector as research on milk composition. By publishing economics and extension work alongside processing and production science, IJDS reflects the full system that turns village milk into a national industry.
Who reads the journal
The association describes the journal's readership directly. IJDS is circulated in various parts of the country and to nations abroad, and is read by most members of the dairy community. It is widely referred to by chief executives in cooperatives, federations, private and multinational organisations, and by dairy organisations overseas. Libraries and educational institutions in India and abroad subscribe to it. That readership profile — executives, scientists, teachers and students — explains the journal's tone and contents. Its papers must satisfy peer scrutiny while remaining useful to an industry reader, and its reviews and short communications give practitioners a route into print alongside full research articles. The association notes that institutional and library subscriptions continue to grow, extending the journal's reach with each volume.
Indexing and academic standing
For a research journal, discoverability is standing. The Indian Journal of Dairy Science is indexed in the UGC CARE list and in the Emerging Sources Citation Index, according to journal directories that track it, and those listings place it within the recognised framework Indian academics use when choosing where to publish and what to cite. Its long volume run, its association ownership and its consistent bi-monthly schedule reinforce that standing. Directory summaries describe it as a reputed research journal in its field. For dairy scientists at India's agricultural universities, ICAR institutes, cooperative research wings and private laboratories, IJDS offers something an international journal cannot: a readership composed precisely of the Indian dairy community their work is meant to serve.
The journal and Indian dairying
The journal cannot be separated from the industry behind it. India is the world's largest milk producer, and the association that publishes IJDS also initiated, in 2014, the celebration of National Milk Day on 26 November, the birthday of Dr Verghese Kurien. The association's zonal branches and state chapters, its conferences and its industry gatherings form the living network the journal serves in print. Research published in IJDS — on a better rasogolla machine, a mastitis profile, a farmer producer organisation — feeds back into that network through the cooperatives, federations and institutions that subscribe. In that sense the journal is both archive and instrument: it records what Indian dairy science knows, and it carries that knowledge to the people positioned to use it.
Access and continuity
Readers encounter the journal today in two ways: through the printed issues that reach member institutions and libraries, and through the association's online presence, where issue contents are listed and linked to the article platform. The association states the journal's terms clearly — views expressed by authors do not necessarily reflect those of the IDA, and articles may not be reproduced without prior permission — the standard apparatus of a society journal protecting its record. Six issues a year, volume after volume, the Indian Journal of Dairy Science continues the task set for it: imparting scientific knowhow, in its publisher's words, as a tool for disseminating research findings across one of the largest dairy industries on earth.
