The Texel Sheep Society is a key partner in a new international research project aiming to find ways to incorporate genetic merit for low environmental impact into national breeding schemes for sheep.
Together with New Zealand, Ireland and three other key sheep-breeding nations and in partnership with SRUC, the project aims to provide a platform for national and global comparison of methane and carbon dioxide emissions from sheep for the purpose of selective breeding for lower-emitting animals.
Building on existing and previous project collaborations at home and abroad, the project uses portable accumulation chambers across all countries for individual animal methane measurements. In the UK, texelplus recorded Texel flocks are participating in the research.
Society chief executive John Yates said that while methane measurement using Portable Accumulation Chambers (PAC) was still in its early stages, if scalable and affordable, it could play a vital role in breeding programmes to support the government’s net-zero target.
“However, focusing solely on methane reduction could undermine profit traits key to commercial sheep production, so balancing its economic value within multi-trait breeding indexes is also important.”
Crucial to the project is the understanding of what impacts there might be of reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) on other animal characteristics such as growth, feed intake and efficiency and quantifying the effects of these.
The new knowledge will enable recommendations for breeding programmes to be determined in tandem with the economic implications of selecting for low methane sheep.
In the UK and other countries there is chronic under-adoption of genetic improvement as a means to meet Government policy targets for lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and there are many barriers to taking up new outcomes from research by the sheep industry.
The robust science from this project will provide a mechanism for national and global comparisons to underpin Governmental GHG reduction targets for the successful implementation of science into policy.
The project ‘SustainSheep’ is carried out under the Green ERA-Hub, a Coordination and Support Action (CSA), funded through the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation (R&I) programme under Grant Agreement No. 101056828.
Learn more about the project here.