THE answer to how farmers in Africa and Asia could one day grow crops that are both resistant to climate change as well as being able to reduce methane emissions in cattle could be found in a laboratory in Scotland.
Using sophisticated screening equipment, scientists at SRUC in Edinburgh have been able to vastly accelerate the process of testing different genotypes of Napier grass, a popular forage in sub-Saharan Africa.
Their research showed that some grass samples were likely to generate three times as much methane following digestion than others.
This suggests, say the scientists, that “it will be possible to select for low methane accessions that promote animal production”.
The UK-CGIAR Centre project – Defining new phenotypes for forage improvement based on rumen function and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – is a partnership between SRUC and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR).
The project is funded by UK International Development.
“Climate change has a significant impact on millions of livestock farmers, herders and their families across Africa and Asia,” explained Professor Jamie Newbold, who is leading the research.
“They face the double burden of needing to decrease environmental and climate footprints while producing more milk and meat and being negatively impacted by climate change impacts, such as heat stress, and increasing frequency and intensity of droughts and floods.
“There is an urgent need for modern approaches for transitioning low- and middle-income countries to climate smart and sustainable food systems.
“The variations we have found mean that it should be possible to identify plant accessions that are resilient to climate effects in terms of both biomass production and lower methanogenic capacity.
“Future research will estimate the genetic correlation between traits and optimise methods to harness this novel source of variability for deployment in modern breeding and gene editing programmes to drive a step change in the productivity and resilience of livestock production in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.”
Dr Chris Jones, principal scientist, livestock genetics, nutrition and feed resources at ILRI, said: “Our initial thoughts were that variation in methane emissions would be closely correlated with forage digestibility.
“However, this is not necessarily the case, suggesting that other characteristics of the forage have an impact and making the ability to directly measure emissions from individual genotypes all the more important.”
