Researchers have explored several different kinds of diet supplements to stop the cows from releasing so much methane, including puffy pink seaweed, tropical leaves, oregano, and fish oils.
Last year, researchers from Pennsylvania State University developed a dietary supplement, 3-NOP, for cows that cut their methane emissions by a quarter, without disturbing their milk production. Why do cows burp and fart methane in the first place? When cows digest their food, microbes in their stomach break down the substance and produce methane. The methane builds up in their stomach until there’s no room left, and it’s released primarily via the mouth but sometimes the bum.
Scientists have recently discovered that they could significantly reduce methane from cow farts and burps even more by editing their genetic make-up. Gene editing cuts straight to the chase, as it makes changes in the DNA sequence, allowing scientists to tailor the animals’ characteristics.
French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier and American biochemist Jennifer A Doudna were awarded the Nobel Prize for the ground-breaking CRISPR gene-editing method on October 7. The technique involves modifying the DNA of micro-organisms, plants, and animals with exacting precision.
The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) published a report last month that analyzed how gene editing could help fight climate challenges, including improving the sustainability of fish and shrimp aquaculture, optimizing biofuels, and reducing methane emissions from cows and rice paddies. ITIF’s report concluded that gene editing could result in a 50% improvement in agricultural productivity by 2050.
Val Giddings, a co-author of the report, said:
While it is impossible to predict the extent to which gene-edited solutions will contribute to climate change mitigation, it is clear there is considerable potential. The gene-editing tool kit is so powerful, its applications so widespread, and its development so rapid that we simply cannot yet conceive all the ways in which it will be used in the coming decades.
Roughly 1.4 billion cattle worldwide make up the second-largest source of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Methane is a potent GHG. The Environmental Defense Fund claims that methane is eighty-four times stronger than carbon dioxide in the first twenty years after its release.
Data from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization shows that cattle and other grazing animals make up around 40% of the annual global methane budget. Since microbes mainly cause the methane that cows produce in their digestive tract, gene editing, and selective breeding could offer long-term solutions for those methane emissions.
In 2012, an Australian study of over 1K cattle from different herds found that among the 250K other microbes in their digestive tracts, around 39 were associated with both methane generation and productivity.
The ITIF study wrote:
As the individual genes responsible for the presence of these microbes are identified, it will become straightforward to use gene editing to knock out those most responsible for high methane production bacteria or increase the expression of others that favor low-methane species.
These findings suggest that gene editing could drastically cut emissions from livestock. The researcher’s next steps will be to extend this technique into cattle and sheep.
The post Gene-Editing Cows To Cut Methane Emissions From Burps And Farts appeared first on Intelligent Living.
