I-Corps: Eliminating Livestock Methane Emissions through Plant Biotechnology

Award ID: 2403659

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of agricultural crops such as corn and sorghum when used as feed that reduce methane emissions from farm animals. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is eighty-four times stronger than CO2, and methane from animal agriculture is the largest single source, accounting for 5% of total greenhouse gases worldwide. Currently, meat and dairy corporations are aligned with leading scientists, governments, and non-governmental organizations in identifying methane reduction as the key to rapid climate results. However, current technology cannot meet these goals at scale. Recent innovations such as feed additives, require construction of new infrastructure to produce and deliver. Farmers are asked to pay for new products that are complicated to use and unprofitable. The proposed technology uses the existing agricultural system to grow and deliver feed crops to reach farms at massive scale, allowing methane reduction by substituting methane reducing crops in animal feed. This may allow meat- and dairy-producing companies to meet their sustainability goals. This I-Corps project is based on the development of a transgenic biosynthesis pathway that allows plants to produce anti-methane compounds. The proposed technology enables land plants to produce bromoform, a molecule that is naturally found in seaweeds, cyanobacteria, and phytoplankton. Bromoform and bromoform-bearing seaweeds are now well-established as treatments that can eliminate nearly all enteric methane emissions from livestock when incorporated in feed. Research results demonstrate that model plants and crops created with this technology self-synthesize small amounts of these compounds while growing under normal conditions, allowing the harvested products to be directly used for animal feed with no further additives or processing needed to eliminate methane. Further, an anti-methane compound normally found in exotic and hard-to-grow tropical seaweeds was produced in plant seeds at 20 times the amount needed to offset more than 98% of cattle methane emissions. In addition, the proposed technology includes methods to stabilize and enhance the delivery of multiple anti-methane compounds, making them more suitable for real-world use on farms. This technology suggests that modifications to common crop plants may be a viable, practical means of reducing methane emissions from livestock. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Ruth Shuman