AEA Ignite - High throughput screening of compounds to abate cattle-derived methane emissions - Young Henrys

Start year: 2025

Summary: Project aim – develop a high throughput screening system that can identify compounds/organisms that reduce methane from cattle diets. Currently, the technology for testing the efficacy of novel feeds (grasses, feed-additives, algae) takes months to screen a handful of samples. This is due to the technical bottleneck of having to measure methane ebulation from 100 mL samples for batch screening using bovine gastric fluid. We propose to develop a screening proxy, automate, and miniaturize the assay. We are developing this system for testing algal samples, but it could work equally efficiently with grass feeds or extracted compounds.