Implementing genetic tools to reduce methane emissions in NZ sheep flocks

Genetics is a tool which can reduce methane emissions, and a concerted effort is required to make this technology available to ram breeders and commercial sheep producers. As a technically demanding trait to measure there is a need for a combination of cheaper and more scalable proxy measures coupled with a genomic selection strategy. Roll out will require some technical challenges within the evaluation to be addressed, particularly around genomic evaluations in multi-breed populations when phenotype records are limited. Incentives to address methane emissions using genetic selection will require different approaches to many other traits as methane is an externality to sheep production business and not directly observable. Consequently, approaches to indirectly quantify genetic reduction in methane emissions, and to incorporate these reductions into assessments of farm level methane emissions will be required to incentivise uptake.