Tailored Options for Sustainable Supply Chain Management

We aim to launch varieties of five major feed crops, each one of which works best for a major livestock production system. We are currently working on corn grain, for use in large US-style dairies; ryegrass, for New Zealand-style grazing pastures;  and sorghum, for forage/silage in warm regions like Brazil and India.

Different versions of our technology work in slightly different ways, because they use different mechanisms of reducing methane. In some cases we cause our plants to produce a compound that interferes with the microbes that generate methane in the animal gut; in other cases the plants make an enzyme that redirects carbon metabolism from methane into something more useful. Here's one example: we gave feed plants the genetic instructions to make a well-known methane reducing compound that's normally found in a rare seaweed. When we gave animals feed including about 5% engineered plants, we found that their methane emissions decreased by over 90% within just a few days.