A Noosaville-based company has developed an affordable feed additive for cattle designed to reduce methane emissions from cow burps by about 65 per cent.
The Queensland government has granted $3.8 million to help commercialise the supplement.
Affordably reducing methane emissions from Australia's 30 million burping cattle is a step closer, researchers say, after reaching a milestone at an industrial estate minutes from Noosa's Main Beach.
In a shed stacked high with self-cleaning tanks, swirling red algae is being mass-produced under strobing lights.
Founded eight years ago, Provectus Algae has developed what it describes as a library of photosynthetic microbes.
Among its work, it's using algae to make granular and liquid cattle feed additives for feedlots, paddocks and dairy farms.
Now a $3.8 million Queensland government grant will help the company commercialise its cattle feed supplement.
The recipe was built on CSIRO's 2011 discovery that native Asparagopsis seaweed could significantly reduce methane emissions from livestock.
However, a 2024 Murdoch University study found cattle avoided feed with higher Asparagopsis concentrations, and there was evidence of ulceration and inflammation in cows' stomachs.
Provectus Algae CEO Nusqe Spanton said his company swapped the native seaweed out and recreated its processes using other algae and photosynthetic microbes.
"It's a bioidentical product to what's found in the Asparagopsis itself," he said.
