(Press-News.org) Philadelphia, August 13, 2024 – Research into reducing greenhouse gas emissions from livestock has increased exponentially as the dairy and agriculture sectors work together toward shared sustainability and efficiency goals. While this progress has been made in all areas of dairy science research, from genetics to animal health and welfare, dairy nutrition has emerged as a particularly impactful area for emission reduction. In a new invited review in the Journal of Dairy Science, a preeminent voice in sustainability and dairy nutrition synthesizes what we know so far and reveals that new nutrition strategies could potentially slash methane emissions by a staggering 60% in the coming years.
Methane (both enteric methane produced during digestion and methane from manure) is the critical greenhouse gas that makes up most of the dairy industry’s environmental footprint. The invited review’s author, Alexander Hristov, PhD, PAS, Distinguished Professor of Dairy Nutrition, Department of Animal Science, The Pennsylvania State University, and recipient of the 2024 Journal of Dairy Science Highly Cited Award explains, “There are two main ways to tackle enteric methane emissions through nutrition: adjusting an animal’s diet or adding in specific new ingredients.”
Dr. Hristov’s review provides an insightful overview of what we know now about both options, where additional research is needed, and which methane-reduction pathways might be most practical and achievable for the future.
The review begins with the latest findings on diet reformulation, including adjusting concentrate feeds, feeding corn versus grass and legume silage, and using alternative forages such as sorghum or plantain. With all of these options available, can diet changes have a real impact on methane emissions? The answer, asserts Dr. Hristov, isn’t simple or one size fits all.
Dr. Hristov says, “Diet reformulation depends on a farm’s unique scenario to be an effective tool. If a dairy has room for efficiency and productivity improvements, for example, balancing diets can be helpful.”
However, this approach is less practical in intensive dairy production systems, where nutritional professionals formulate the diets and producers have efficiency dialed in. In those dairy systems, Dr. Hristov notes, “It may be difficult to find specific feeds that can have a substantial and measurable impact on methane emissions.”
That leaves feed additives, new ingredients supplemented in small amounts to a dairy cow’s existing diet, to reduce methane produced during digestion. Based on existing research, the most promising additives are seaweeds and 3-nitrooxypropanol (3-NOP).
Red seaweed varieties, for example, contain bromoform, an active compound that has been effective in reducing methane emissions in several studies. Dr. Hristov adds, “Bromoform appears to be able to achieve a 30% to 50% emissions reduction, but whether this effect can be applied broadly and consistently needs more research.”
The strongest feed additive contender to emerge is 3-NOP. According to Dr. Hristov, “Its efficacy has been proven in numerous controlled and independent experiments, and 3-NOP is currently the only available option headed to market for dairy operations looking to use additives to reduce emissions.”
Dr. Hristov also highlights two areas that could benefit from more research as the dairy sector works to move the sustainability needle forward: reducing methane emissions from cow manure and studying whether nutrition strategies can be paired together synergistically.
Dr. Hristov comments, “In theory, practices with different modes of reducing methanogens could work together to boost overall mitigation.” The article cites a best-case scenario in the literature in which a 20% to 30% reduction by a feed additive could be paired with another 10% to 20% reduction from a second feed additive, plus, perhaps, another 5% to 10% from improvements in forage quality and diet manipulation, adding up to a substantial overall impact in lowering methane.
While Dr. Hristov was clear that the pathways toward dairy sustainability are still in flux—and that no one solution will work for every dairy system and every farm—advances in dairy nutrition will be an essential component in the methane-reduction mix. He concludes, “If currently available mitigation practices prove to deliver consistent results, and novel, potent, and safe strategies are discovered, nutrition alone can deliver up to a 60% reduction in enteric methane emissions and pave the way for a more sustainable dairy sector.”
END
Dairy nutrition is leading the sustainability charge
Advances in dairy nutrition science may be able to deliver a 60% reduction in ruminant livestock enteric methane emissions in the coming years, according to a new Journal of Dairy Science® invited review
2024-08-13
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
A new method for protection from plant pathogens could help support global food security.
2024-08-13
By modifying a plant intracellular immune receptor (NLR), researchers have developed a potential new strategy for resistance to rice blast disease, one of the most important diseases threatening global food security. The collaborative team from the UK and Japan have recently published their research in PNAS. This could have implications for future approaches to crop protection and ultimately global food supply stability.
The research was led from the Department of Biochemistry and Metabolism at the John Innes Centre, with partners at The Sainsbury Laboratory, University of East Anglia, and the Division of Genomics and Breeding, Iwate Biotechnology Research Center, Japan. For a ...
Halogen bonding for selective electrochemical separation, path to sustainable chemical processing demonstrated
2024-08-13
With a new polymer that only attracts certain substances from solutions when electrically activated, researchers have taken a major step towards sustainable chemical separation.
A team based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has reported the first demonstration of selective electrochemical separation driven by halogen bonding in the journal JACS Au. This was achieved by engineering a polymer that modulates the charge density on a halogen atom when electricity is applied. The polymer then attracts only certain targets – such as halides, oxyanions, and even organic molecules – from organic solutions, ...
Study reveals urban trees suffer more from heat waves and drought than their rural counterparts
2024-08-13
NEW YORK, August 13, 2024 — A recently published study in Ecological Applications details how trees in New York City and Boston are more negatively impacted by heat waves and drought than trees of the same species in nearby rural forests. The finding, made by researchers at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC), highlights the challenges urban trees face in the context of climate change and underscores the importance of tailored urban forestry management as ...
New $7.7 million grant to propel search for medications for brain disorders
2024-08-13
JUPITER, Fla. — Children born with a damaged gene needed for healthy brain development, SYNGAP1, experience seizures, sensory processing disorders, difficulty speaking, intellectual disability, and autism-like behaviors. It’s a condition without any treatments, one that’s hard both on parents and children, said Gavin Rumbaugh, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology.
Rumbaugh and a team of scientists from the institute have been awarded a five-year grant from the National Institute of Mental Health worth $7.7 million to work toward a treatment. Their goal is to ...
National Cancer Institute awards grant to Hollings researchers focused on depression among cancer survivors
2024-08-13
Depression is common among people with likely incurable cancer – understandably so. But studies have shown that it can be treated, and if the goal is for individuals to be able to engage as much as possible with family, friends, hobbies or whatever gives them joy and purpose in whatever amount of time they have, then treating depression becomes imperative.
That’s not so easy, though, as patients may face a shortage of mental health workers, difficulties with transportation and continuing stigma around mental health issues.
Evan Graboyes, M.D., a head and neck surgical oncologist and director of Survivorship ...
MSK Research Highlights, August 13, 2024
2024-08-13
New research from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) found patients with non-small cell lung cancer brain metastases may benefit from up-front stereotactic radiosurgery; identified a connection between antibiotic use and autoimmune diseases; and uncovered a previously unknown structural role for messenger RNAs in the cytoplasm of cells.
Patients with non-small cell lung cancer brain metastases may benefit from upfront stereotactic radiosurgery
For patients with non-small cell lung cancer that has spread to the brain, targeted therapies called ...
Study finds that dopaminergic medication improves sleep quality in Parkinson’s disease patients
2024-08-13
A study involving 22 Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients has shown that use of the dopaminergic drug levodopa improves sleep quality. When the patients took the drug, the number of times they woke up during the night fell 25% and the amount of time they remained awake fell 30% on average.
The investigation was conducted with FAPESP’s support by researchers at São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Brazil, and the University of Grenoble Alpes (UGA) in France. An article reporting the results is published in ...
Breakthrough in nanotechnology: Viewing the invisible with advanced microscopy
2024-08-13
Tailoring light with Nanomaterials
Metamaterials, engineered at the nanoscale, exhibit unique properties not found in naturally occurring materials. These properties arise from their nanoscale building blocks, which, until now, have been challenging to observe directly due to their size being smaller than the wavelength of light. The team's research overcomes this limitation by employing a new microscopy technique that can simultaneously reveal both the nano and macro structures of these materials.
A New Window into the Nano World
The key finding of this research is a methodological breakthrough that enables the visualization of structures previously too small to be seen ...
Tackling cancer from the inside out: A deep dive into immune checkpoint inhibitors
2024-08-13
In the past two decades, immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have revolutionized cancer treatment, showing promising results against various solid tumors. This study reviews recent developments in ICIs, focusing on new targets like T cell immunoreceptor with Ig and ITIM domains (TIGIT), T cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain-containing protein 3 (TIM-3), and lymphocyte activation gene-3 (LAG-3). These targets aim to overcome resistance mechanisms limiting the effectiveness of current therapies, such as anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4. By identifying and developing these new ...
RPI Physicist Moussa N’Gom is using light to enhance nuclear security
2024-08-13
Our nation’s security depends on the effective detection of nuclear materials at our borders and beyond. To address this challenge, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) physicist Moussa N’Gom, Ph.D., is leading research aimed at developing a quantum sensing probe to detect and characterize special nuclear materials precisely and without contact. Special nuclear materials are only mildly radioactive but can be used in nuclear explosives.
The research is being conducted through RPI’s participation in the Consortium ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
Thirty-year mystery of dissonance in the “ringing” of black holes explained
Less intensive works best for agricultural soil
Arctic rivers project receives “national champion” designation from frontiers foundation
Computational biology paves the way for new ALS tests
Study offers new hope for babies born with opioid withdrawal syndrome
UT, Volkswagen Group of America celebrate research partnership
New Medicare program could dramatically improve affordability for cancer drugs – if patients enroll
Are ‘zombie’ skin cells harmful or helpful? The answer may be in their shapes
University of Cincinnati Cancer Center presents research at AACR 2025
Head and neck, breast, lung and survivorship studies headline Dana-Farber research at AACR Annual Meeting 2025
AACR: Researchers share promising results from MD Anderson clinical trials
New research explains why our waistlines expand in middle age
Advancements in muon detection: Taishan Antineutrino Observatory's innovative top veto tracker
Chips off the old block
Microvascular decompression combined with nerve combing for atypical trigeminal neuralgia
Cutting the complexity from digital carpentry
Lung immune cell type “quietly” controls inflammation in COVID-19
Fiscal impact of expanded Medicare coverage for GLP-1 receptor agonists to treat obesity
State and sociodemographic trends in US cigarette smoking with future projections
Young adults drive historic decline in smoking
NFCR congratulates Dr. Robert C. Bast, Jr. on receiving the AACR-Daniel D. Von Hoff Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education and Training in Cancer Research
Chimpanzee stem cells offer new insights into early embryonic development
This injected protein-like polymer helps tissues heal after a heart attack
FlexTech inaugural issue launches, pioneering interdisciplinary innovation in flexible technology
In Down syndrome mice, 40Hz light and sound improve cognition, neurogenesis, connectivity
Methyl eugenol: potential to inhibit oxidative stress, address related diseases, and its toxicological effects
A vascularized multilayer chip reveals shear stress-induced angiogenesis in diverse fluid conditions
AI helps unravel a cause of Alzheimer's disease and identify a therapeutic candidate
Coalition of Autism Scientists critiques US Department of Health and Human Services Autism Research Initiative
Structure dictates effectiveness, safety in nanomedicine
[Press-News.org] Dairy nutrition is leading the sustainability chargeAdvances in dairy nutrition science may be able to deliver a 60% reduction in ruminant livestock enteric methane emissions in the coming years, according to a new Journal of Dairy Science® invited review