Professor SUN Xuezhao, a leading scientist on the mitigation of methane emissions in ruminants, from AgResearch, visits ISA from Jan 6 to 10 under invitation of Hunan Research Center of Livestock & Poultry Sciences in ISA., CAS.

AgResearch is one of New Zealand's leading research organizations, and their research work focuses on enhancing the value, productivity and profitability of New Zealand’s pastoral, agri-food and agri-technology sector value-chains to contribute to economic growth and beneficial environmental and social outcomes for New Zealand.

Professor SUN Xuezhao works at AgResearch's animal health and nutrition group, and his research field is methane emission reduction in ruminants. As we all know, ruminants are important contributors to the New Zealand economy via their production of milk, meat and fiber products. However, methane emissions from ruminants account for almost a third of New Zealand’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Reducing these emissions is important for meeting New Zealand’s obligations under current and future international agreements on greenhouse gas reduction. Therefore, Professor SUN Xuezhao’s work focuses on the multiple challenges of creating sustainable animal productivity while balancing environmental impacts such as the emission of greenhouse gases.

On Jan 7, Professor SUN Xuezhao gave a lecture entitled “Feeding Fresh Forage on Methane Emissions from Ruminants”. In his lecture, firstly, Professor SUN Xuezhao gave us a brief instruction about New Zealand’s location, population, animal production, especially about organizations doing methane emission reduction research. Then he showed us the facilities they used when doing ruminant nutrition research. And at last, he concentrated on works they have been done concerning fed fresh forage to reduce methane emissions from ruminants. They did many experiments to screen low green-house gas feeds, and finally found out that when fed cruciferous plants, such as Kale, Rape, Swede and Turnip, can significantly reduce methane emissions from sheep. This result sounds interesting, however, further study is needed to clarify the mechanisms of cruciferous plants caused methane emission reduction.

After the lecture, Professor SUN Xuezhao talked with faculty members, as well as some post-doctoral fellows and Ph.D. students from Professor TAN Zhiliang’s research group. Dr. SUN Xuezhao and Dr. TAN Zhiliang also discussed in details about strengthening the links of science and technology, cooperation and graduate student supervision exchange between ISA and AgResearch. Additionally, Both of them discussed the frame of a new project, which will be started in July, 2013.

Prof. SUN Xuezhao is giving a lecture