Climate Clever Clovers: New Paradigm to Reduce the Environmental Footprint of Ruminants by Breeding Low Methanogenic Forages Utilizing Haplotype Variation.

ABSTRACT: Mitigating methane production by ruminants is a significant challenge to global livestock production. This research offers a new paradigm to reduce methane emissions from ruminants by breeding climate-clever clovers. We demonstrate wide genetic diversity for the trait methanogenic potential in Australia's key pasture legume, subterranean clover (Trifolium subterraneum L.). In a bi-parental population the broadsense heritability in methanogenic potential was moderate (H² = 0.4) and allelic variation in a region of Chr 8 accounted for 7.8% of phenotypic variation. In a genome-wide association study we identified four loci controlling methanogenic potential assessed by an in vitro fermentation system. Significantly, the discovery of a single nucleotide polymorp

SUBMITTER: Kaur P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5591941 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature