Defra announces £2.9m funding to breed low methane sheep
Industrywide R&D project to help sheep farmers contribute to net zero
The sheep sector has been awarded £2.9m from DEFRA's Farming Innovation Programme, delivered by Innovate UK, Defra’s OR Innovate UK’s Farming Innovation Programme small R&D projects fund to carry out an industrywide project designed to breed sheep with a naturally low carbon footprint and in turn help English farmers to make a positive contribution to UK agriculture’s journey towards net zero.
Called Breeding Low Methane Sheep (BLMS) and led by Innovis, leading supplier of performance-recorded rams, the three-year initiative will measure methane emissions from a total of 13,500 sheep in 45 flocks, collect and build the necessary data and develop the tools required to genetically reduce their methane emissions and improve the efficiency of the flock. The project will eventually demonstrate the impact of low-carbon sheep on whole farm carbon footprints.
In addition to InnovisInnovis will partner with , other progressive, performance-recording breeder groups will provide project guidance, animal data and host on-farm events include the including Sheep Improvement Group (SIG), Performance Recorded Lleyn Breeders (PRLB) and the Centurion Group of Dorset Sheep Breeders to deliver the research and host on farm events..
Scientific input, technology and various additional genetics expertise will be provided by SRUC and Harper Adams University, while Signet Breeding Services, part of AHDB, will provide performance recording services. Industry and supply chain partners - CIEL, NSA, and Pilgrims Pride and Waitrose Dalehead, will help steer farm system modelling including the use of carbon calculators and will drive an integrated KTE programme. NSA will provide an important link with the wider industry and a ‘guiding hand’ regarding policy issues.
Innovis chief executive, Dewi Jones explains: “We are an alliance of forward-thinking sheep farmers and commercially driven breeders applying genetic science and using performance-recording to deliver profitable maternal genetics at significant scale, all of which are designed to make the most efficient use of grass and forage to produce sustainable and healthy lamb of high nutritive value. Making use of grasslands by way of sheep grazing also helps sequester carbon into the soil.”
He continues: “This partnership unifies us with academics, a key lamb supply-chain and industry bodies whose networks extend to thousands of English sheep farmers. We’ve all delivered many successful projects, applied research results on-farm and communicated with a wide audience but never before combined forces; BLMS will consequently build on and strengthen existing relationships.”
The project will initially develop on-farm protocols and use new innovative tools and technologies including PAC Portable Accumulation chambers (PAC) chambers to measure or predict methane emissions from grazing sheep alongside measures of health, production and efficiency traits at the individual animal level. It will go on to investigate biological relationships between the genetic potential of sheep to emit lower levels of methane with rumen size and microbiota and with ewe productivity, efficiency and health.
This comprehensive set of information will enable genetic parameters to be estimated and breeding values, both genetic and genomic to be developed along with a selection index focused on methane reduction potential improving farm carbon footprint. Genetic relationships among other traits that may be influencing GHG emissions will also be assessed and analysed.
To widen the BLMS project’s impact beyond the 45 flocks involved, plans are to roll out a wide-reaching communication programme with other sheep breeders and farmers throughout England, in collaboration with supply chain partners and wider industry bodies, including NSA. The initiative will be designed to identify the most effective ways of communicating the project’s outputs and implications to other farmers and help educate and support them to make genetic changes.
Dewi Jones adds: “We collectively believe that this project will help to further improve the sustainability of our sheep by using genetic science and breeding to naturally reduce the amount of methane which is a natural by-product of their forage digestion process. Combine with the integrated knowledge exchange programme, and we have an initiative that will ultimately reduce flock carbon footprint, help improve sheep farmers’ productivity, sustainability, resilience and profitability.”