Promising nutritional strategies to reduce enteric methane emission from ruminants – a meta-analysis

International audience; Decreasing enteric CH4 emissions is important in mitigating the environmental impact of livestock farming. The present meta-analysis examined effects of nutritional mitigation practices on absolute CH4 emissions (g/animal/d) and CH4 yield [g CH4/kg dry matter intake (DMI)] as well as on DMI (kg/d), average daily gain (kg/d), milk production (kg/d), and neutral detergent fiber digestibility (%). The database for this analysis consisted of over 400 studies. Only studies that reported statistical variance were included in the analysis (295 studies and 644 treatment mean comparisons). A standard random-effects meta-analysis weighted by inverse variance was carried out. The effects of the standardized mean difference (SMD) were classified as small (≤-0.2 and >-0.5), medium (≤-0.5 and >-0.8), and large (≤-0.8). Of the analyzed treatments, inclusion of chemical inhibitors, electron sinks, and lipids had a large effect on absolute CH4 emissions (-2.1 ± 0.5, -1.6 ± 0.2, and -1.3 ± 0.2 SMD ± SE, respectively; P 0.15), whereas electron sinks and lipids led to a small decrease in DMI (-0.2 ± 0.1, and -0.4 ± 0.1 SMD ± SE, respectively; P ≤0.01) without affecting animal productivity (P >0.05). Although these nutritional strategies effectively reduced CH4 emissions without compromising animal productivity, their adoption will largely depend on their economic feasibility.