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Announced by the Honourable Lawrence MacAulay, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, this $12M Challenge encourages innovators to develop and deploy economically viable and scalable practices, processes, and technologies designed to reduce enteric methane emissions produced by cattle.

The goal of this Challenge is to identify and recognize innovative solutions that accelerate the reduction of methane emissions from the cattle sector. Lactanet’s genetic evaluations for Methane Efficiency was selected as one of 13 semi-finalists from 86 applications submitted by the deadline in February 2024. This successful outcome from the first of four stages of the Agricultural Methane Reduction Challenge provides an exciting opportunity for Lactanet and Semex to collaboratively advance through the remaining stages over the coming four years with the grand prize of $1M to be awarded to two innovations in the spring of 2028.

Lactanet’s Chief Services Officer, Brian Van Doormaal, commented “Genetic progress is permanent and cumulative from generation to generation. Our Methane Efficiency index is an important genetic selection tool that allows Canadian dairy producers to achieve an expected 20% to 30% reduction in methane emissions from their herd by 2050, without negatively affecting production levels.”