The role of seaweed in cow diets is unknown, but a team of federal scientists in Nova Scotia has begun introducing some seaweed in hopes that it might help fight climate change.

Focused? Cattle beating.

An Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada project involving feeding varying amounts of seafood to 16 cows on a research farm in Nepean, N.S., found that by replacing just one percent of the cows’ regular diet with kelp, researchers discovered That this reduced methane emissions. Cows are suppressed by 15%.

“This is a pretty significant result,” said John Duinsveld, lead biologist.

He said that when cows eat food, it first enters the stomach called the rumen where various microbes break down the food. This process results in methane, a greenhouse gas linked to global warming, being released by burps.

To measure emissions, they placed cows in breathing chambers connected to a computer system that detects gases coming from the animals, said one of the researchers, Brianna Richardson.

At first the cows needed to get used to the chamber, which is why the researchers left them in the room for a few hours at a time. They were eventually left there for 24 hours to measure their daily methane emissions.

“There’s a vacuum pump that’s attached to that (chamber) and it pulls all the air they’re breathing into a computer system, which measures methane, carbon dioxide and oxygen,” Richardson said. Richardson said.

Kelp contains biological components such as tannins, which Duenesveld said may be changing the structure of cow dung. That means the cows he studied didn’t burp less, but Their spots were less powerful..

Duynisveld said that an average cow emits about 100 kilograms of methane annually, so the research aims to make a small contribution to combating climate change.

Methane, which is produced by the agriculture industry, landfills and oil and gas activities, is responsible. account for about 14 percent of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions

Shannon Arnold, with the Marine Program at the Ecology Action Center in Halifax, said the study differed from others being conducted internationally because it focused on using locally harvested kelp species that can be cultivated with reduced environmental impact.

The Duynisveld study used kelp that comes from the north coast of Prince Edward Island and parts of Nova Scotia, commonly known as beach grass.

Arnold said coastal grasses can easily be cultivated locally with limited land use, and she would like to see more collaboration between cattle ranches and local kelp farmers.

Cultivation of kelp is relatively easy, he said, as it can be grown in small areas, with the potential to yield about 10 kilograms of kelp per meter. Growing it can have the added benefit of being an alternative to some more environmentally burdensome crops and fertilizers, he said.

“There’s a lot of interest (in kelp) from new farmers and small farmers and people around our coastal areas,” Arnold said. “It would be a great opportunity.”