Effects of sustained reduction of enteric methane emissions with dietary supplementation of 3-nitrooxypropanol on growth performance of growing and finishing beef cattle1

Abstract

The study objective was to evaluate the effects of sustained reduction of enteric methane (CH) emissions with dietary supplementation of the inhibitor 3-nitrooxypropanol (NOP) on growth rate and feed conversion efficiency of growing and finishing beef cattle. Eighty-four crossbred steers were used in a 238-d feeding study and fed a backgrounding diet for the first 105 d (backgrounding phase) and transition diets for 28 d followed by a finishing diet for 105 d (finishing phase) with 3 doses of NOP (0, 100, and 200 mg/kg DM). The experiment was a completely randomized design using 21 pens (4 cattle/pen) with 7 pens per treatment. When cattle were fed the backgrounding diet, pen DMI was reduced ( < 0.01) whereas G:F tended to improve ( = 0.06) with increasing dose of NOP supplementation. During the finishing phase, DMI ( = 0.06) and ADG ( = 0.07) tended to decrease with increasing dose of NOP supplementation. Although both levels of NOP were effective in reducing CH emissions from the backgrounding diet ( < 0.01), only NOP supplemented at the highest dose was effective in reducing total CH emissions from the finishing diet ( < 0.01). Methane yield (g/kg DMI) was reduced whereas hydrogen emissions were increased at the highest dose of NOP supplementation with both backgrounding and finishing diets ( < 0.01). Overall, these results demonstrate efficacy of NOP in reducing enteric CH emissions from cattle fed backgrounding and finishing diets, and these effects were negated once NOP supplementation was discontinued.

Micrometeorological Methods for Measuring Methane Emission Reduction at Beef Cattle Feedlots: Evaluation of 3‐Nitrooxypropanol Feed Additive

“…New feed was delivered to the pen bunks beginning at 0600 h, and although the cattle had unrestricted access to feed, it appeared the cattle consumed much of the feed in the morning. The greater impact of 3-NOP later in the day follows the results from other studies, which show a peak in CH 4 emission a few hours after feeding (Vyas et al, 2016).…”

“…Those studies measured CH 4 emissions using whole‐animal chambers. However, also using chambers, Vyas et al (2016) reported 84% reduction in CH 4 from cattle fed a barley‐based diet with 3‐NOP (200 mg kg −1 DM daily). The magnitude of CH 4 reduction observed in our study is realistic.…”

The effects of dietary supplementation with 3-nitrooxypropanol on enteric methane emissions, rumen fermentation, and production performance in ruminants: a meta-analysis

“…2019R1F1A1056904). ments methods of CH 4 emissions among all used studies [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] (Table 1). In short, the administration methods of NOP were direct administration via cannula, top dressed, and mixed with diet.…”

“…The NOP is a structural analogue of methyl coenzyme-M, which inhibits the activity of methyl coenzyme-M reductase related to the final step of methanogenesis [11]. Until now, total 14 in vivo studies using NOP supplementation were performed on various domestic ruminants, including sheep [12], beef cattle [13][14][15][16][17][18][19], and dairy cattle [20][21][22][23][24][25]. According to the results of previous studies using NOP in vivo, the CH 4 emissions and proportion of acetate (% total volatile fatty acids, VFA) clearly decreased, whilst the proportion of propionate (% total VFA) significantly increased, but any adverse effects were not detected.…”

“…In a recent meta-analysis, Jayanegara et al [26] observed that increasing NOP supplementation linearly decreased CH 4 emissions regardless of type of CH 4 unit, when a meta-analysis was investigated on 10 in vivo studies [12,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. Dijkstra et al [27] revealed that NOP supplementation has stronger CH 4 mitigation effects in dairy cattle than in beef cattle, and those effects were decreased in increasing dietary fiber content, when a meta-analysis was conducted using 9 in vivo studies [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. With our knowledge, there is no meta-analysis study investigating the effects of supplementation of NOP on CH 4 reduction in a long term experiment, and the changes of rumen fermentation by NOP supplementation in a related with ruminant types was not analyzed as well.…”