Contract for the Provision of SCF0220 (GrassToGas)

GrassToGas will determine appropriate breeding and nutritional management mitigation strategies to reduce GHG in pasture-based livestock systems. The overall aim of the project is to combine international scientific and industry expertise to generate new knowledge and applied solutions for the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in sheep. The concept relates to the fact that the international sheep breeding community is at different stages of development in the creation of resource populations to generate feed intake and methane emission measurements for sheep. These are needed to specifically provide new breeding solutions for the sheep industry. The GrassToGas partners are using different sensor technologies, measurement protocols and approaches to address the issue of reducing GHG emissions from sheep. Combining and sharing expertise and addressing knowledge gaps through collaboration in GrassToGas will ensure that consensus on the utilisation of key measurement methods as predictors of GHG emissions, feed and forage efficiency can be agreed and adopted at an international level for use in sheep breeding programmes. As the reduction in GHG emissions is a global issue, a trans-national and trans-disciplinary (breeding, nutrition, economic) approach is necessary which will be incorporated into this project by respective partners focussing on key elements of the knowledge gap for pasture-based sheep systems.