There is increasing pressure on the agricultural sector to lower greenhouse gas emissions. The current solution is in simple terms to decrease stocking rates and plant trees. However, neither of these options are sustainable long-term. Which is why we’ve invested in breeding highly productive animals that produce less total methane emissions.

Breeding for low-emission animals, particularly when paired with enhanced animal performance, will have a significant impact on lowering greenhouse gas emissions. A 10-year collaboration between Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium (PGGRC), New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre (NZAGRC) and AgResearch has shown that individual sheep can vary in methane emissions and that these differences are heritable. Therefore, breeding can provide a permanent and cumulative effect that provides long term impact. There is potential for lowered absolute emissions by around 1% per year, every year.

We now have the ability to measure methane emissions from sheep in a commercially viable model. Since 2019 we have been working with AgResearch, who have developed a trailer with Portable Accumulation Chambers (PAC) that can be taken to individual farms for measuring sheep emissions. These measurements are processed via B+LNZ Genetics New Zealand Genetic Evaluation, for the estimation of Methane ‘Research’ Breeding Values (BVs).