An international team of researchers has
demonstrated that feeding a compound known as 3-nitrooxypropanol (3-NOP) could
reduce ruminant methane emissions by up to 30 per cent without any apparent
negative effects.
Their report, titled “Mode
of action uncovered for the specific reduction of methane emissions from
ruminants by the small molecule 3-nitrooxypropanol,” is published in the
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The authors also claim that the
additive could reduce the volume of feed energy currently lost to methane
emissions, instead channeling that energy to growth.
The most recent research report
outlines the mode of action for 3-NOP, while a previous
article, also published in PNAS, documented the effect.
