New Zealand maintains an active role in the Global Research Alliance on agricultural greenhouse gases (GRA). NZAGRC provides leadership in livestock emissions research and training in emissions measurement throughout the world. 


Training & development opportunities
During September the GRA provided a two week training course to 15 African region technicians to learn about enteric methane and nitrous oxide measurement systems. The NZAGRC worked with the University of Pretoria to organise the course, in South Africa, which provided a full training course for nitrous oxide chamber measurement methods, building and using SF¬6 tracer technique yokes, using respiration chambers for methane measurement and understanding and analysing the data collected from these methods. 


An additional information day for these technicians was held in collaboration with AnimalCHANGE covering an overview of measurement systems and the current international research environment, information on national inventory contributions.
The course was the second run by the NZAGRC through the New Zealand Government&#39;s capability development fund; the first was in New Zealand in 2013 for South East Asia and South American technicians. 


For individuals looking for new opportunities to train, PhD, Postdoctoral and Technician&#39;s Awards are always open to international applications to develop skills working in a New Zealand organisation - the first step is for the candidate to complete an expression of interest form from www.livestockemissions.net 


For Senior Scientists, a GRASS Award provides funding for a short term (up to six months) research collaboration with other GRA member countries. For more information, visit www.livestockemissions.net 


New Zealand led research successes
The New Zealand funded ‘Identification of low methane emitting phenotypes&#39; project, a targeted postdoctoral research project funded in 2011/2012 was completed earlier in the year. The project has shown that genomic selection for methane yield is viable, although not yet tested in industry, and developed documentation to enable research and industry groups around the world to record this trait in standard industry compatible databases. For information on this project see www.asggn.org.nz 


The Global Rumen Census will be completed in the next few weeks by AgResearch in support of the Livestock Research Group of the GRA. The project collected and analysed rumen samples from more than 50 livestock systems around the world. The project outputs will provide a very interesting overview of the microbial communities present in the rumen of animals in a variety of species and regions, and provide information on the regional or global applicability of specific mitigation options being developed, such as a vaccine against methane-generating microbes. The background to this project can be found at www.globalrumencensus.org.nz 


Other projects still on the road include: 


	Development of optimal adjuvants for a methane vaccine 
	Search for methanogen inhibitors & rapid discovery techniques
	Global catalogue of genome sequences of methane-generating microbes
	Investigations into a variety of new methane emission reduction options(Nanobeads, interspecies hydrogen transfer, natural lovastatins)
	Investigations into options for nitrous oxide emission reduction (accelerating
	reduction, provision of decision making tools)
	Options for use and validation of methane measurement systems in New Zealand.


Other international research collaborations (with New Zealand funding provision) include contributing to research in: 


	Australia
	Europe
	USA
	South East Asia