methane emission; international collaboration; phenotypes; genetic selection
Abstract :
[en] Measuring and mitigating methane (CH4) emissions from livestock is of increasing political and economic importance. Potentially, the most sustainable way of reducing CH4 emission from ruminants is through the estimation of genomic breeding values to facilitate genetic selection. Enteric CH4 emissions are difficult and expensive to measure, thus genomic prediction could provide significant, long term economic benefits. Implementation will require global collaboration to define a suitable measure and many thousands of records to ensure valid and accurate evaluations. A number of approaches for individual measures on a large scale have been recently proposed including fixed and portable respiratory chambers, SF6 tracer gas, laser detector systems and sniffers or spot samples at milking. Some studies have also shown promising results in predicting individual animal CH4 emission from mid infra-red milk spectra data. It is currently unclear, however, how well measures between these approaches correlate. Comparison and validation of these novel phenotypes presents a huge task over the coming years. A crucial first step is to define a trait phenotype and measuring protocols to create a robust resource for the global sharing and comparison of data, and further, to measure correlations with production traits. Proposed phenotypes could be measures of “total methane emissions”, measured in grams CH4 per day, or “methane yield” measured in grams CH4 per kg dry matter intake (DMI) when DMI is available as a phenotype, or “methane intensity” measured in grams CH4 per kg of produced human edible protein. Here, we describe how two recently established entities; an ICAR Working Group and the EU COST-Action network METHAGENE are working in close collaboration to successfully address these major challenges together with the Animal Selection Genetics and Genomics Network (ASGGN) of the Livestock Research Group of the Global Research Alliance (GRA) on agricultural greenhouse gases.
Disciplines :
Genetics & genetic processes Animal production & animal husbandry
Author, co-author :
de Haas, Y.
Lassen, J.
Pickering, N.K.
Oddy, V.H.
Wall, E.
Gengler, Nicolas ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Agronomie, Bio-ingénierie et Chimie (AgroBioChem) > Ingénierie des productions animales et nutrition