Mark Aspin, head of the Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium, says that, after setting the blueprint for future gas reduction research, there remains plenty of work ahead to turn scientific discovery into commercial reality for New Zealand pastoral farmers.
After a reshuffle and major government injection of $338 million in last year’s budget to create the NZ Centre for Climate Action on Agricultural Emissions, the consortium Aspin heads will move to managing and commercialising the IP it has developed.
The shuffle has prompted a review of the consortium’s past 18 years of work. The consortium was hatched at a time when initial investment of $5m a year in methane reduction was viewed with scepticism by some – and the validity of climate change itself was still sometimes challenged.
The review highlights the group’s major areas of work where, rather than any silver bullet breakthroughs, incremental, discoverable proofs are percolating through.
“When we started back in 2003 we had six or seven technologies that we thought could help reduce emissions, said Aspin.
“But a few started to fall over pretty early on, and that pushed us back into investing in a better genetic understanding of methane genomics.”
Lifting the hood on the bacteria that create the problems was an early win. The group was the first to sequence the bacteria’s genome, and work has advanced across four broad areas including low gas forages, stock genetics, methane inhibitors and vaccine development.
Developing low-gas sheep genetics has been one of the more “farmer friendly” outcomes of the work, and it is gradually being picked up in breeding flocks throughout the country.
Aspin points to 50 breeders who have already tested their breeding flocks twice to track methane reduction, but concedes it will take some years to disperse the genes to have a material national effect.
The estimate is that there is a 1% reduction in gas emission that accumulates with every generation of sheep. Work on cattle genetics is presently well underway, and by 2050 the livestock reduction could be 10-20% in total.
Low emissions feed and supplements are another relatively easy reach for farmers.
The consortium’s work has proven that brassicas, when fed as 100% of diet, can reduce methane output by 25% a day. Overall, the potential reduction nationally could be 3%.
Perhaps the highest profile control has been methane mitigators, boosted by the approval of 3-NOP, trade name Bovaer, for use in South America and Europe.
But its impact is greatest when fed to indoor-housed animals on a fixed-ration diet, and its launch does not leave Aspin feeling that the race has been lost.
“We always like to come first in developing something. But it [Bovaer] does not give us the impact required when fed as a supplement in the NZ free-range situation.”
He has pushed to see regulatory pathways fast-tracked for approvals, and believes there will be a slew of additional fed mitigators coming soon.
The consortium has also proven that a long-acting bolus concept could work.
Its proof of concept worked in sheep as a long-term capsule, but the reduction impact was small and only for 40-60 days.
“The challenge has been to find potential compounds that work for a length of time in a free-range animal.”
Vaccines remain the elusive holy grail for researchers, bringing not only domestic reward but a global royalties if developed. Researchers are now far more informed on the difficulties.
To date prototype vaccination trials on sheep have not reduced methane emissions. But scientists have learnt that vaccines can produce high levels of methane antibodies in livestock saliva, and they continue to work on better understanding the proteins in methane bacteria that these antibodies can target.
Aspin is confident the pastoral sector can achieve its 10% reduction in gases by 2030, often by incorporating existing techniques.
The 24-47% reduction by 2050 is the hairier target, but one he says will be achieved with a combination of the technology the consortium’s work has lifted the lid on in the past 18 years.
As the original GM for the consortium, Aspin has no plans to drop away from the groundbreaking work.
He remains working with Beef + Lamb NZ overseeing low methane genetics, while also managing the IP developed by the consortium.
On a relatively minuscule $5m a year research budget the consortium has achieved a high level of overseas respect that has put NZ on the front foot for pushing the boundaries in livestock emission reductions.
“We have learnt that science takes time, and that often that time is not always well spent,” Aspin said.
“I am optimistic we will learn to reduce emissions in a harmonic way – there is an awful lot we know now we did not know 18 years ago.”
