Genetic parameters for methane indicator traits based on milk fatty acids in cows

Dairy production is pointed out for its large methane emission. Therefore, currently studies of factors affecting emission and methods to abate methane emission are numerous. However, an important issue is the development of easily obtainable indicators, because they would also allow estimating animal genetic variability of methane emission. Recently methane indicators were proposed using gas chromatrography based milk fatty acid composition. We derived these published methane indicators using 1100 calibration samples directly from mid-infrared (MIR).For the published indicator showing the highest relationship (R2 = 0.88) with Sulfur Hexafluoride 6 methane emission data, genetic parameters for this MIR based indicator were estimated by single trait random regression test-day models from 619,272 records collected from 2007 to 2011 on 71,188 Holstein cows in their first three lactations at Walloon region of Belgium. The average daily heritability was 0.35±0.01, 0.35±0.02 and 0.32±0.02 for the first three lactations, respectively. Similarly, the lactation heritability was 0.67±0.02, 0.72±0.03 and 0.62±0.03. As expected, methane production was higher during the peak milk production depicting the normal lactation curve. The largest differences between estimated breeding values (EBV) of sires having cows in production eructing the highest and the lowest methane content was 21.80, 22.75 and 24.89 kg per lactation for the first three parities, the variances of the EBV of the sires with daughters were 10.67, 12.46, 12.18 kg2. Results were similar for other indicators. This study suggested that methane indicator traits can be predicted by MIR. Genetic parameters also indicated a rather high heritability and genetic variability exist for these published indicators and consequently a potential high genetic variability of methane eructation by dairy cows. Therefore, these first finding might open new opportunities for animal selection programs that include the reduction of methane emission.