Sheep farmers will have the opportunity to help reduce their flock’s carbon footprint through both improved ewe efficiency and lower methane emissions following the results from Breed for CH4nge, a ground-breaking £3m research project.

Funded from DEFRA's Farming Innovation Programme, the project has been delivered by Innovate UK as well as 11 industry wide partners, including the National Sheep Association (NSA). Sheep breeding company Innovis has led the innovative work.

Attendees joining a media briefing of the project findings on Wednesday 27th May heard that flock data gathered from 40 varied flocks confirms that methane emission is heritable. The findings have led to the development a new breeding value (EBV) for methane output. This EBV feeds into the new Breed for CH4nge index that ranks animals on their breeding potential for a naturally low carbon footprint.

The new breeding tools will be available this season for maternal rams from Innovis and will soon be available across the other performance-recording maternal sheep breeder groups involved in the project.

Furthermore, the Breed for CH4nge index will be made available to all other maternal performance recording sheep breeders via Signet, providing them with the opportunity to reduce enteric methane, currently contributing 50% to 60% of a sheep enterprise’s carbon footprint.

NSA Chief Executive Phil Stocker says: “The Breed for CH4nge project’s intention from the start was to inform the wider sheep industry and breeders and make available strategies for improving ewe efficiency and lowered methane emissions. I now hope all sheep breeders can look at and make use of what this project has achieved.”

SRUC Sheep Geneticist, Dr Nicola Lambe adds: “This project has provided a hugely important, high quality data set, collected from industry flocks which has enabled us to unpick the genetic control of methane emissions and the underlying mechanisms affecting them. The increased understanding has allowed breeding tools to be designed that can help optimise UK sheep’s productivity and sustainability, positioning UK research among the world-leaders in breeding for reduced methane emissions from sheep.”

Dr Janet Roden continues: “Sheep and cattle emissions are not always easy conversations because we often feel they’re unfairly portrayed in the popular press, however we believe this project has helped to identify the win-win solutions that can benefit both the farmer’s bottom line and the environment, consequently it offers them a sustainable route to improving their product’s environmental credentials while helping to address consumers’ concerns over the footprint of the meat they eat.”

The project also provided an opportunity for the flocks involved to build robust data sets for other heritable traits likely to influence the flock’s carbon footprint, for example resistance to gut worms, ewe weight and body condition, alongside genomic profiles.

Innovis Chief Executive Dewi Jones comments: “This information has helped to understand the relationships between these traits. The data, which so far suggests that there are no real antagonisms with other traits that are directly related to the ewe and lamb’s performance and health, is being fed into improving the EBV accuracy for the breeds involved. This in turn will help to improve ewe efficiency and health in UK grass and forage systems and reduce carbon footprint.

“However we were surprised by the scale of difference in emissions between lambs even within groups that had all been managed together from birth. Furthermore, feed intake measurements of individual lambs has shown that the most efficient lambs ate 20% less feed but grew at the same rate as less efficient lambs, however, this was not reflected in differences in methane emissions. Both daily intake of the lambs and their feed efficiency appear to be highly heritable and so likely to be passed onto the next generation, a very encouraging finding.”

Dr Nicola Lambe went on to combine data from the Breed for CH4nge project and other research projects carried out in Scotland, Wales and Ireland to show that there is a genetic relationship between smaller rumens and lower methane emissions. She explains: “The implication of this ground-breaking research is the need for further investigation, however it strengthens the team’s belief that the methane breeding values should always be used alongside other performance measures to guard against unintended reductions in efficiency and profitability.”

She adds: “Perhaps the most exciting finding, and one that confirms work carried out in New Zealand, is that differences in the rumen microbiome of animals appears to have a strong association with differences in their methane emissions. Again, further research is needed to establish to what extent these differences can be passed from generation to generation and to develop cost effective on-farm tests that will enable these differences to be harnessed in a breeding programme.”

Further facts from the project can be found on the NSA website. A copy of the full project will also be available from the Breed for CH4nge website.

Project partners include AHDB, UK Agri-Tech Centre (UKATC), Centurion Group of Dorset Sheep Breeders, Harper Adams University (HAU), Innovis, NSA, SRUC, Performance Recorded Lleyn Breeders (PRLB), Pilgrim’s Europe, Sheep Improvement Group (SIG) and Waitrose.