Sustainability & efficiency

Genetic parameters of methane emissions traits in US Holstein cows

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Abstract

Enteric methane (CH4) from dairy cattle represents both an environmental challenge and an energy inefficiency. Selective breeding is a promising tool to mitigate CH4 emissions from dairy cattle. The goal of this study was to estimate genetic parameters for methane emission traits in US Holstein cows. Data consisted of 2,396 cow-lactation records from 2,092 mid-lactation Holstein cows collected from 11 research and commercial farms between 2022 and 2025. All cows had CH4 production (g/d), measured using GreenFeed systems, net energy for lactation, body weight, and pedigree records. In addition, for 1,694 cow-lactations from 1,442 cows we collected dry matter intake records and calculated residual feed intake (RFI). We calculated two residual methane traits regressed on their main predictors: residual methane intensity (RMI; g/d) calculated as CH4 regressed on net energy for lactation and metabolic body weight, and residual methane yield (RMY; g/d) calculated as CH4 regressed on dry matter intake. Genetic parameters were calculated using repeatability animal models. All models included parity, days in milk, and cohort (a combination of trial, season, and treatment) as fixed effects. Methane production showed moderate to high heritability (0.28±0.04) and high repeatability (0.61±0.03) across lactations. Residual methane traits also showed moderate heritability estimates, 0.21±0.05 for RMY and 0.23±0.04 for RMI. Both residual traits were moderately repeatable across lactations, 0.53±0.05 for RMY and 0.53±0.04 for RMI. The two residual methane traits were highly genetically correlated (0.97 ± 0.01), which allows us to extend phenotyping efforts to commercial settings. Notably, methane production was favorably correlated with feed efficiency (RFI), with a genetic correlation of 0.38 ± 0.13. By definition, RMY is not correlated with RFI. Overall, our findings show that CH4, RMY, and RMI are moderately heritable and consistently repeatable across lactations. In addition, our results suggest that more feed-efficient cows produce less methane, as indicated by the favorable correlation between CH4 and RFI.

Keywords: 2026

How to Cite:

Appuhamy, R., Baldwin, R., Bilginer, U., French, E., James, L., Kalscheur, K., Kebreab, E., Koltes, J., Mantonavi, H., Marin, F., Martinez-Boggio, G., Parker Gaddis, K., Peà±agaricano, F., Santos, J., Sarmikasoglou, E., Tempelman, R., VandeHaar, M., Weigel, K. & White, H., (2026) “Genetic parameters of methane emissions traits in US Holstein cows”, World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production Digital Archive 2026(1): 2287134. doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/wcgalp.24220

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