Prediction of methane emissions from dairy cows by near infra-red spectroscopy of faeces using a portable instrument

摘要

Knowledge on methane (CH4) emissions represents a crucial point to establish nutritional and genetic mitigation strategies, particularly in dairy cows. As technical and economic problems hinder the possibility of large scale direct measurements of CH4emissions, there is a need for proxies that allow indirect measurements (Negussie et al., 2017). The aim of this study was to verify preliminarily the possibility of developing calibration curves for the CH4 emissions phenotypes from NIR spectra of dried faeces samples acquired by a portable instrument.