21st Century Cattle - environmentally friendly and fuel efficient
21st Century Cattle - environmentally friendly and fuel efficient - Beef CRC - Beef Genetic Technologies
| March 2007 |
 The Beef Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) is on the hunt for fuel efficient cattle which eat less and give off fewer gases.Livestock are estimated to contribute more than 12 per cent of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions in the form of methane: put bluntly - burps and passing wind. These gas emissions eliminate up to 10 percent of the energy consumed by an animal. The Beef CRC is set on capturing this lost productivity and profitability with research aimed at reducing methane output and increasing energy capture, while addressing increasingly urgent political and environmental challenges. By 2012 the Beef CRC predicts half of all feedlots in Australia and 20 percent of grazing enterprises will have adopted new Beef CRC developed technologies able to increase energy capture by 10 per cent and reduce methane output by 20 per cent per animal. Beef CRC project leader and Professor at The Ohio State University and CSIRO Livestock Industries, Mark Morrison, does not underestimate the size of the task ahead. He believes the answer will ultimately involve a range of strategies, including genetics, feeding and direct intervention with bioactive compounds in the rumen. A decade of work by the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries shows that some animals produce significantly more methane than the average, and some significantly less, indicating a genetic factor in methane production that may be associated with genetic values for net feed efficiency. Feed is another important factor: for instance, animals fed a grain-rich diet often produce less methane per unit of digestible energy than when the same animal is fed a grass-based diet. But the research that could have the biggest effect on the beef industry is investigating what goes on in the bovine rumen, home to the methane-producing microbes at the heart of the issue. "There's been a lot of interest in slowing methane production in cattle, and an obvious first step is trying to suppress the methane-producing microbes," Professor Morrison said. Research is currently working to identify families of methane-producing microbes using genetic screening techniques, so that all of them are targeted. "There are very likely to be related families of methane-producing bacteria, which makes the job especially challenging," Professor Morrison said. "If we develop a strategy that suppresses one type of organism, but not its cousins and other related families, it's very likely that another group of methane producers will simply step up to take the place of the one we have suppressed." "Another key aspect to it all is finding a way to recycle the hydrogen released during feed digestion in the rumen without producing methane," Prof Morrison said. “Beef CRC scientists are therefore examining the alternative hydrogen utilizing pathways that exist in cattle and trying to identify the non-methane-producing microbes responsible for them.” Ideally, Professor Morrison said the project will result a range of inoculants, bioactive agents or supplements that can be easily used by the feedlot and grazing industries to suppress methane production in cattle and at the same time capture more of the digestible energy that would be otherwise lost, into profit. |
| For further information, contact Alison Buchanan, Communications Manager, (02) 6773 3795 or 0439 405 077 |
