ESTIMATION OF GENETIC PARAMETERS FOR METHANE INDICATOR TRAITS BASED ON MILK FATTY ACIDS IN DUAL PURPOSE BELGIAN BLUE CATTLE

摘要

Livestock production is one of the key sources of Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions such as methane (CH_4). Since CH_4 is 21 times more potent to carbon dioxide in greenhouse effect, reduction of CH_4 would play an important contribution to abate greenhouse emissions (IPCC, 2007). Accurate measurement of CH_4 emission can be obtained using respiration chamber calorimetry method but the cost and the analysis time limit the number of evaluated animals (Kebreab, et al., 2006). The sulfur hexailuoride gas (SF6) measurement is an alternative (Johnson et al., 1994) because of its relatively lower price but accurate measurement of CH4 is complex and recording of such data is unfeasible at a large scale. Therefore, some studies have focused on the use of traits indirectly related to the CH4 emission and easily recorded at large scale, as fatty acids (FA).