Ruminant animals
are great contributors to the human food chain due to their ability to utilize complex polysaccharides in plant
cell walls (cellulose, hemicelluloses and pectin), which are otherwise non
digestible to any of the mammalian digestive enzyme and turn these into meat and
milk for human consumption. Digestion of these polysaccharides in ruminant
diets is attributable to anaerobic biodegradation of these compounds into their
respective monomers by microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) present in the
forestomach of the animals. In spite of their contribution to the human food
chain, ruminant animals are often debated as one of the contributing factors in
global climate change due to the emission of CH4 as a byproduct of
fermentative digestion of feedstuffs in the forestomach. In addition,
production of methane by ruminants causes a significant amount of feed energy
loss which could be used for animal growth and
production if methane production is prevented.
Domestic ruminant animals are one of the important
anthropogenic sources of methane which contribute approximately 23% (81 Tg of
CH4) of the total anthropogenic annual methane production, and this
is the second largest (fossil fuel is the first) source of anthropogenic
methane production. Approximately two thirds of total methane production by
domestic ruminants is contributed by cattle and the rest is shared by other
domestic ruminants like buffalo, sheep, goats etc. Several
factors influence the enteric methane emissions from ruminants. Daily dry
matter intake, digestibility of the feed, amount of fibres and soluble
carbohydrate in diet, type of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) produced during
fermentation (acetate: propionate ratio) etc, effect the amount of enteric
methane production. Similarly, animal species, breed and composition of the
microbial population in the rumen and rumen pH also affect methane production.
Thus, reduction in
methane emission from ruminants has twofold benefits. Firstly, it will help to
reduce the global warming due to greenhouse gases and secondly, it reduces feed
energy loss. Reduction in methane emission will result in higher growth and
productivity of ruminant and improve the efficiency of feed utilization with
the same amount of energy supplied. Reduction in GHG emissions from ruminant
animals could be done earlier than from other sectors and requires less effort
and financial investment thus making the strategy more feasible.
P.S.: References are available on request.
P.S.: References are available on request.
what may be the intervention then ?
ReplyDeleteThere are lots of strategies being considered and studied to reduce the emissions from Ruminants..increasing the productivity of the animals could be the most feasible method for developing countries which will help to reduce the emissions per unit livestock products. I will be happy to send the details if you want more details on intervention strategies. Thank you for following.
DeleteInteresting read... I must admit I was quite ignorant about the fact that ruminant animals also contribute to GHG emissions. From what you write, a change of diet for ruminants might be a strategy as well, but that might not be feasible for a country like ours... at least not in the short to medium term I think.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the article, I will be interested to read more like these.
That's true Nirmal sir, even changing in diet could help to reduce the emissions and lots of research are running in this area...feeding plants consisting saponin, tannin and certain essential oils also help to reduce the emission significantly but the the challenge here is this changes in emission is temporary i.e. animal revert to original emissions rate once they adopt the food...some of our indigenous plant/herbs may have potential to reduce the emissions but requires research in this area...there are lots of other alternatives being studied
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