Researchers found that baby kangaroos produce a special acetic acid that can replace methane-producing microbes.
Nationalgeographic.co.id – Baby kangaroo manure may be able to help provide an unlikely solution to the environmental problem of the methane that cows produce. This microbial culture developed from kangaroo manure inhibits methane production in a cow stomach simulator, according to a new Washington State University study.
After the researchers added a baby kangaroo culture and a known methane inhibitor to the simulated stomach, it produced acetic acid instead of methane. Unlike methane, which is excreted by cattle as flatulence, acetic acid is beneficial to cows because it aids muscle growth.
These exciting findings have been published in the journal Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology bertajuk “Reducing methane production from rumen cultures by bioaugmentation with homoacetogenic bacteria.”
“Methane emissions from cows are a major contributor to greenhouse gases, and at the same time, people like to eat red meat,” said Birgitte Ahring, corresponding author on the paper and a professor in the Bioproducts, Sciences and Engineering Laboratory at the WSU Tri-Cities Campus. . “We have to find a way to reduce this problem.”
Reducing the burping and farting of methane emissions from livestock is nothing to laugh about. Methane is the second largest greenhouse gas contributor and is about 30 times more powerful at heating the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
More than half of the methane released into the atmosphere is thought to come from the agricultural sector, and ruminants, such as cattle and goats, are the most significant contributor. Furthermore, the methane production process requires as much as 10% of animal energy.
Cows produce methane emissions, which accelerate climate change.
Researchers had tried changing the diet of the cows and giving them an inhibitory chemical to stop methane production, but the methane-producing bacteria soon became resistant to the chemical.
They’ve also been trying to develop a vaccine, but the microbiome of a cow depends on where it feeds, and there are too many strains of methane-producing bacteria around the world. Interventions can also negatively affect the animal’s biological processes.
WSU researchers studied fermentation and anaerobic processes and previously designed the artificial rumen, the largest stomach compartment found in ruminants. This is done to simulate the digestion of cows.
With so many enzymes capable of breaking down natural materials, the rumen has “an extraordinary ability,” says Ahring.
While seeking to investigate how to outperform the methane-producing bacteria in their reactor, Ahring learned that kangaroos have acetic acid-producing, not methane-producing, bacteria in their foregut.
