Abstract: Greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe) cause pollution and contribute to climate change. The livestock industry is a key contributor to GHGe in global agricultural production. For example, methane emitted from cattle has a global warming potential of 25 carbon dioxide equivalent, and it has 12 years of life-time. At a small scale, such as at a herd level or an experimental setup, there are many methods and technologies that can be used to quantify or estimate livestock GHGe through using sophisticated equipment (e.g. respiration chamber), and bio-marker (e.g. Sulfur Hexafluoride). However, at a large scale, such as at an industry or a country level, mathematical modelling is the only practical way to estimate GHGe from livestock. While multiple GHG empirical models have been suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other authors, the reliability of the estimated outcome is largely depending on the accuracy of input activity data (e.g. livestock inventory). Therefore, this short review will explore and discuss opportunities and challenges of using precision agriculture technology, such as use CDAX Pasture Meter to qualify the herd intake and use the walk-over-scale to quality liveweight change in a large number of animals, to improve the estimation of livestock GHGe in a large scale.

Biography: Dr Cheng completed his PhD in sustainable livestock production in New Zealand. Dr Cheng collaborated with 12 institutions from seven countries (China, New Zealand, UK, Bangladesh, France, Ireland, Kenya) over the past five years. Dr Cheng published 70+ refereed journal articles and received more than $1 million research fund since 2017, covering studies ranging from monogastric to ruminant, from nutrition to genetics, from livestock management to robotic dairy milking system. Dr Cheng is an associate editor for Animal Biology and a publishing committee member for Animal (Cambridge), and also in the editorial board of Journal of Dairy Research (Cambridge). Dr Cheng is the vice chair of British Society of Animal Science membership committee and a member of Dairy Australia National Feedbase Systems Advisory Committee. Dr Cheng successfully supervised 20 scholars to complete their postgraduate degrees, visiting scholarship and internship training over the last 5 years. Dr Cheng is currently supervising 3 PhD and 1 Master degree students as a principle supervisor.