Mitigation of greenhouse gases in dairy cattle via genetic selection: 2. Incorporating methane emissions into the breeding goal

The objective of this study was to analyze the impact of incorporating enteric methane into the breeding objective of dairy cattle in Spain, and to evaluate both genetic and economic response of traits in the selection index under 4 scenarios: (1) the current ICO (Spanish total merit index), used as benchmark; (2) a hypothetical penalization of methane emissions through a carbon tax; (3) considering methane as a net energy loss for the animal; and (4) desired genetic response to reduce methane production by 20% in 10 yr. A bio-economic model was developed to derive the economic values for production and methane traits in each scenario. The estimated economic values for methane were estimated at −€1.21/kg and −€0.32/kg for scenarios 2 and 3, respectively. When merged with other traits in the selection index, methane had less economic importance (1–5%) than milk protein yield (39–42%) or milk fat yield (27–28%). Under these scenarios, selection resulted in an unfavorable response in methane emissions when it was included with an economic weight, with an increase in methane estimated from 0.52 to 0.60 kg/cow per year. Small differences in total profit per cow per year were observed between indices. The incorporation of methane production into the breeding objective had a negligible effect on production, with minor reductions in the expected genetic gain for fat and protein yields and in total economic benefits. However, total methane emissions in the dairy industry in Spain were estimated to decrease between 2 and 5% in the next 10 yr due to positive genetic trends for milk yield and an expected decrease in the total number of dairy cows. Additionally, methane intensity per 1 billion liters of milk would decrease in all scenarios. The uncertainty in the genetic parameters of methane and in carbon prices were tested in a sensitivity analysis, resulting in small deviations from the benchmark scenario. A major effect was observed only under the desired genetic response scenario. In this case, it was possible to achieve a 20% reduction of methane production in 10 yr via selective breeding but at the expense of a larger ad hoc weight (33%) of methane in the selection index and decelerating the genetic gain for production traits from 6 to 18%. This study shows the potential of including environmental traits in the selection indices while retaining populations profitable for producers.