Reducing the Impact of Livestock Farming on the Environment in Morocco: A Case of Enteric Methane
Keywords:
Greenhouse Gasses, Methane, Livestock Farming, Cattle, Morroco
Abstract
The study aimed to test the effect of natural additives on enteric methane emissions and animal performances. facial mask system was used to measure the methane emissions before and after adding additives to the animals feed. The results showed a small but significant (p<5%) effect on methane emission when using sunflower oil, with a reduction of 8.1 per cent. A product rich in thyme essential oils resulted in an average reduction of 21 per cent in the amount of enteric methane emitted, showed highly significant results (p< 0.01) on live weight gain in fattening bulls, with means of 1.55 ± 0.058 kg for the control group vs 1.88 ± 0.177 kg for the group that received the additive. The same additive showed an increase in daily milk production in all cows receiving the additive compared to the control cows. The results of the average amounts of milk produced per litre per day were statistically significant (p< 0.05), with averages of 15.38±1.32 l/d for the control group and 19.17±1.96 l/d for the group with the additive. The trials undertaken during this study allowed us to verify the interest and the relevance of using the tested natural feed additives, not only for the decrease of enteric methane emission and the preservation of the environment but also for its beneficial effects on cattle production.More research should be conducted on natural feed additives to assess their effects on reducing enteric methane emissions, while improving animals performances.References
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2. Smith, P., Martino, D., Cai, Z., Gwary, D., Janzen, H., Kumar, P., McCarl, B., Ogle, S., O’Mara, F., Rice, C., Scholes, B., & Sirotenko, O. (2007). Agriculture. In Climate Change 2007: Mitigation. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ed. B Metz, OR Davidson, PR Bosch, R Dave and LA Meyer), pp. 497–540. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
3. Tubiello, FN., Salvatore, M., Rossi, S., Ferrara, A., Fitton, N. & Smith, P. The FAOSTAT database of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Environmental Research Letters. 2013, 8, 10pp.
4. FAO 2023. Enteric methane. https://www.fao.org/ in-action/ enteric . Consulted on 04/03/2023.
5. Benchaar C. and Greathead H. Essential oils and opportunities to mitigate enteric methane emissions from ruminants. Anim. Feed. Sci. Technol. 2011, 166- 167: 338-355.
6. Smith P, Bustamante M, Ahammad H, Clark H, Dong H: Agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU). In: Edenhofer O, Pichs-Madruga R, Sokona Y, Minx JC, Farahani E, Kadner S, Seyboth K, Adler A, Baum I, Brunner S, et al, editors. Climate Change 2014: mitigation of climate change contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA ; 2014.
7. Johnson KA, Johnson DE. Methane emissions from cattle. J Anim Sci. (1995); 73: 2483–92.
8. Hobson PN, Fonty G. Biological models of the rumen function. In: Hobson PN, Stewart CS editors. The Rumen Microbial Ecosystem. Dordrecht : Springer. 1997, p. 661–84.
9. McAllister TA, Newbold CJ. Redirecting rumen fermentation to reduce methanogenesis. Aust J Exp Agric. 2008, 48: 7–13. Doi: 10.1071/EA07218.
10. Morgavi DP, Forano E, Martin C, Newbold CJ. Microbial ecosystem and methanogenesis in ruminants. Animal. 2010, 4: 1024– 36
11. Ferry J.G. Fundamentals of methanogenic pathways that are key to the biomethanation of complex biomass. Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2011, 22: 351– 7.
12. Hammond KJ, Crompton LA, Bannink A, Dijkstra J, Yáñez-Ruiz DR, O’Kiely P, et al. Review of current in vivo measurement techniques for quantifying enteric methane emission from ruminants. Anim Feed Sci Technol. 2016, 219: 13–30.
13. Janssen P.H. Kirs M. Structure of the archaeal community of the rumen. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 2008, 74. 3619-3625.
14. Martin C. Morgavi DP. Doreau M. Methane mitigation in ruminants: from microbe to the farm scale. Animal. 2010, 4: 351–65.
15. McAllister TA. Meale SJ. Valle E. Guan LL. Zhou M. Kelly WJ. Et al. Use of genomics and transcriptomics to identify strategies to lower ruminal methanogenesis. J. Anim. Sci. 2015, 93: 1431–49.
16. Janssen P.H. Influence of hydrogen on rumen methane formation and fermentation balances through microbial growth kinetics and fermentation thermodynamics. Anim Feed Sci Technol. 2010, 160: 1– 22.
17. Poulsen M. Schwab C. Borg JB. Engberg RM. Spang A. Canibe N. et al. Methylotrophic methanogenic Thermoplasmata implicated in reduced methane emissions from bovine rumen. Nat Commun. 2013, 4: 1428.
18. Rowe J. Loughnan ML. Nolan J. Leng R. Secondary fermentation in the rumen of a sheep given a diet based on molasses. British Journal of Nutrition. 1979, 41(02) :393–397.
19. Palangi, V.; Macit, M.; Nadaroglu, H.; Taghizadeh, A. Effects of green-synthesized CuO and ZnO nanoparticles on ruminal mitigation of methane emission to the enhancement of the cleaner environment. Biomass Convers. Biorefinery 2022.
20. Nicholson M.J. Evans P.N. Joblin K.N. Analysis of methanogen diversity in the rumen using temporal temperature gradient gel electrophoresis: identification of uncultured methanogens. Microbial Ecology. 2007, 54: 141-150.
21. Wright A.D.G. Auckland C.H. Lynn D.H. Molecular diversity of methanogens in feedlot cattle from Ontario and Prince Edward Island, Canada. Appl.Environ. Microbiol. 2007, 73. 4206–4210.
22. Jeyanathan J. Kirs M. Ronimus RS. Hoskin SO and Janssen PH. Methanogen community structure in the rumens of farmed sheep. Cattle and red deer are fed different diets. FEMS Microbiol Ecol. 2011, 76: 311–326.
23. Beauchemin KA, Ungerfeld EM, Eckard RJ, Wang M. Review : Fifty years of research on rumen methanogenesis: lessons learned and future challenges for mitigation. Animal. 2020; 14 : s2–16.
24. Zhenming, Z.; Meng, Q. ; Yu, Z. Effects of methanogenic inhibitors on methane production and abundances of methanogens and cellulolytic bacteria in vitro ruminal cultures. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 2011, 77, 2634
25. Kim, H.; Lee, H.G.; Baek, Y.C.; Lee, S.; Seo, J. The effects of dietary supplementation with 3-nitrooxypropanol on enteric methane emissions, rumen fermentation, and production performance in ruminants: A meta-analysis. J. Anim. Sci. Technol. (2020), 62, 31–42.
26. Patra, A.K.; Yu, Z. Combinations of nitrate, saponin, and sulfate additively reduce methane production by rumen cultures in vitro while not adversely affecting feed digestion, fermentation or microbial communities. Bioresour. Technol. 2014, 155, 129–135.
27. Troy, S.M.; Duthie, C.A.; Hyslop, J.J. ; Roehe, R.; Ross, D.W.; Wallace, R.J.; Rooke, J.A. Effectiveness of nitrate addition and increased oil content as methane mitigation strategies for beef cattle fed two contrasting basal diets. J. Anim. Sci. 2015, 93, 1815–1823.
28. Ugbogu, E.A.; Elghandour, M.M.; Ikpeazu, V.O.; Buendía, G.R.; Molina, O.M.; Arunsi, U.O.; Salem, A.Z. The potential impacts of dietary plant natural products on the sustainable mitigation of methane emission from livestock farming. J. Clean. Prod. 2019, 213, 915–925.
29. Patra, A.K.; Min, B.R.; Saxena, J. Dietary tannins on the microbial ecology of the gastrointestinal tract in ruminants. In Dietary Phytochemicals and Microbes ; Springer : Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 2012 ; pp. 237–262.
30. Rebelo, L.R. ; Luna, I.C. ; Messana, J.D.; Araujo, R.C.; Simioni, T.A.; Granja-Salcedo, Y.T.; Vitoa, E.S.; Lee, C.; Teixeira, I.A.M.A.; Rooke, J.A.; et al. Effect of replacing soybean meal with urea or encapsulated nitrate with or without elemental sulfur on nitrogen digestion and methane emissions in feedlot cattle. Anim. Feed Sci. Technol. 2019, 257, 114293.
31. Laabouri F, Guerouali A, Alali S, Oumane H. Effect of sunflower oil in methane emission in dairy cows. Rev. Mar. Sci. Agron. Vét. 2015, 3 (2): 66-71.
32. Anele, U.Y.; Yang, W.Z. ; McGinn, P.J.; Tibbetts, S.M.; McAllister, T.A. Ruminal in vitro gas production, dry matter digestibility, methane abatement potential, and fatty acid biohydrogenation of six species of microalgae. Can. J. Anim. Sci. 2016, 96, 354–363.
33. Laabouri F, Guerouali A, Alali S, Remmal A. Effect of adding a natural additive rich in thyme essential oils of thyme on enteric methane emissions and cattle production performance. Rev. Mar. Sci. Agron. Vét. 10(1). 2022, 141-147.
34. Brooke Charles, G.; Roque Breanna, M.; Shaw, C.; Najafi, N.; Gonzalez, M.; Pfefferlen, A.; De Anda, V.; Ginsburg David, W.; Harden Maddelyn, C.; Nuzhdin Sergey, V.; et al. The methane reduction potential of two Pacific coast macroalgae during in vitro ruminant fermentation. Front. Mar. Sci. 2020, 7, 561
35. Machado, L.; Magnusson, M.; Paul, N.A.; de Nys, R.; Tomkins, N. Effects of marine and freshwater macroalgae on vitro total gas and methane production. PLoS ONE 2014, 9, e85289.
Published
2023-07-02
How to Cite
1.
LAABOURI FZ. Reducing the Impact of Livestock Farming on the Environment in Morocco: A Case of Enteric Methane. Journal of Agricultural and Biomedical Sciences [Internet]. 2Jul.2023 [cited 12Jul.2025];6(3). Available from: https://journals.unza.zm/index.php/JABS/article/view/1020
Section
Veterinary Medicine
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