Improving genomic prediction of methane emission

Methane emission is a heritable trait, which makes selection for lower emitting animals possible. Recent research with Danish Holstein dairy cattle shows the impact of a multi-trait approach to achieve high selection accuracy of lower methane-emitting animals. Studies show that due to the limited number of cows with methane (CH4) records, the accuracies of genomic estimated breeding values (GEBV) are low. CH4 is a scarcely recorded trait, which means it would require a considerable number of co