Broadening the approach to livestock methane mitigation, the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research study with Rod Mackie, University of Illinois

Creating a win win for farmers/ranchers and the environment would be game changing across the whole livestock climate space. The key is to understand the kinetics of methane production by the rumen microbiome and identify opportunities to capture that energy within the animal for production. This approach mitigates methane emissions and decreases feed costs. Plus, creating this win win overcomes the not insignificant implementations/uptake challenge. 

Methane is the end point of a whole series of complex microbial metabolism in the rumen of cattle and sheep. Most current research is simply trying to prevent this last step where Hydrogen in converted to methane. Professor Rod Mackie, a gut microbial ecologist from the University of Illinois is leading an international research team pursuing a very different approach to mitigating livestock methane.

The team is looking at the biomolecular mechanisms that lead to these precursors of methane which they hope will open up broader opportunities for intervention and productivity gains. The team has recently been awarded $2.5 million grant from the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research through their Greener Cattle Initiative. 

The team has six hubs spread across the USA, New Zealand, Canada, Europe, Israel,  and Australia.  Further conversations with key researchers from the team can be found below:

• Sharon Huws -Hydrogen warfare in the rumen - the source of livestock methane emissions, Queens University, Belfast
• Itzik Mizrahi - Microbial good guys and bad guys, and their duplicitous nature, Ben Gurion University of the Negev 
• Athol Klieve - Learning from nature how to eliminate livestock methane emissions, University of Queensland
• Matthias Hess - Ruminant Methane Production, UC Davis

The two key papers published in conjunction with AgResearch NZ are:

• Hydrogen and formate production and utilisation in the rumen and the human colon
• Electron flow: key to mitigating ruminant methanogenesis

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