Researchers in Canada and Europe are teaming up on a new project that aims to “genetically reduce methane emissions from beef cattle”.

The University of Alberta is taking the lead on the five year project which is the first to test a large-scale way to measure the methane produced by beef cattle in Canada.

The key objective is then to help producers “genetically identify which animals in their herds produce less of the potent greenhouse gas GHG”.

The project will also explore “a carbon offset protocol” which if adopted in Canada could potentially give beef producers a “financial return on using genetic selection in their herds”.

More than 2,300 beef cattle in the field will be monitored by researchers who will use a system to measure methane breathed or “burped out by the animals as they feed on treat pellets”.

The Canadian research team will also work closely with European researchers who have been experimenting with near infrared spectroscopy, (NIRS) to analyse manure.

The NIRS has previously been used to analyse milk from dairy cattle, but this is the first time any kind of infrared spectroscopy is being used on beef cattle fecal samples in Canada and at a large scale to develop molecular breeding values for methane emissions.

Beef cattle

According to John Basarab, an associate professor of livestock genetics at the University of Alberta if the If the NIRS method proves successful, “it provides a valuable proxy for fast, cheap and high-throughput measurement of methane emissions”.

He added: “To get a proper representation of methane emissions coming from just one animal takes at least 30 days, so to measure thousands of beef cattle would take a long time.

“Using NIRS, we could potentially get a value for those emissions in as little as a few days.”

Basarab also said that the measurements from the feeding experiments and the fecal analysis will provide the large amounts of data needed to calculate accurate breeding values “and allow producers to pick cattle that have, by inheritance, lower methane emission rates”.

This “trait” could then be added to existing DNA-based multi-trait selection indexes commercialised by the Canadian research centre, Livestock Gentec, which was co-founded by the University of Alberta.

Basarab believes this addition would help round out indexes that already include desirable traits for “superior growth, feed efficiency, carcass quality and female fertility”.

“We’d be able to offer the producer a way to select for an animal that balances all of these qualities,” he added.

The new university-led research project is also looking at ways to increase adoption of genetic selection on commercial farms.

Currently less than 20% of commercial cow-calf producers in Canada are using genomics, mainly because of the high cost of genotyping their animals for various traits, which can be up to $52 per head. 

According to Basarab commercial beef producers currently have not received “a clear signal from feedlots or packers” as to whether genetic selection improves the end price they get for their cattle.