Juan Tricarico

• PhD
• Vice President at Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy

Data and descriptive information were gathered from 226 peer-reviewed scientific publications from beef cattle experiments in which enteric methane and other animal response variables were measured. The dataset was based on the bibliography used by Arndt et al. (2022) but expanded to also include more recent studies published from 2019 to 2023. All...

Supplemental dietary rumen available fats show promise as enteric methane (eCH4) mitigators for lactating dairy cows. However, concerns include variability in eCH4 response and possible negative effects on dairy cow performance. Successful implementation of this mitigation option requires better prediction of responses specifically to rumen availab...

A systematic literature review of in vitro studies was performed to identify methane (CH4) mitigation interventions with a potential to reduce CH4 emission in vivo. Data from 277 peer-reviewed studies published between 1979 and 2018 were reviewed. Individual CH4 mitigation interventions were classified into 14 cat- egories of feed additives based o...

Limiting warming by the end of the century to 1.5°C compared to pre-Industrial times requires reaching and sustaining net zero global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and declining radiative forcing from non-CO2 greenhouse gas (GHG) sources such as methane (CH4). This implies eliminating CO2 emissions or balancing them with removals while mitigating...

A systematic literature review of in vitro studies was performed to identify methane (CH4) mitigation interventions with a potential to reduce CH4 emission in vivo. Data from 277 peer-reviewed studies published between 1979 and 2018 were reviewed. Individual CH4 mitigation interventions were classified into 14 cat- egories of feed additives based o...

U.S. dairy collectively commits to achieve greenhouse gas neu­trality, optimize water use while maximizing recycling, and improve water quality by optimizing utilization of manure and nutrients by 2050. The farm and field strategy to achieve these goals is termed the Net Zero Initiative. Enteric methane miti­gation is a key area of focus for the 20...

A dataset of descriptive information was compiled from 213 peer-reviewed scientific publications that focused on dairy cow experiments and measured enteric methane emissions. This dataset was primarily based on the bibliography used by Arndt et al. (2022), with the addition of studies conducted from 2019 to 2022. The articles were identified for in...

Our objective is to explore the predicted mitigation potential of 3-nitrooxipropanol (3-NOP) when added to typical diets for lactating cows across the United States (US). Three forage-to-concentrate ratios (F:C on a dry matter basis, DM) were considered: 70:30, 50:50, and 30:70, respectively. Corn silage (CS) was combined with a second forage sourc...

In addition to the level of intake, physical and chemical nature of feed play a key role in CH4 emissions from ruminant livestock. Empirical models combining these factors are considered in recent updates of feed evaluation systems worldwide. Our objective is to explore the variability in predictions of enteric CH4 emissions (g/d) of lactating cows...

Ruminant livestock are an important source of anthropogenic methane (CH4). Decreasing the emissions of enteric CH4 from ruminant production is strategic to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C by 2050. Research in the area of enteric CH4 mitigation has grown exponentially in the last 2 decades, with various strategies for enteric CH4 abat...

Among one of the key challenges in dairy production is the management of manure in a way that is beneficial for agricultural production, with minimal environmental and public health impacts. Manure management systems (MMS)—the entire system of handling, storage, and application of manure—are diverse in countries with developed dairy industries such...

Enteric methane is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions from milk production systems. Two organizations based in the United States, the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and the Dairy Research Institute, have developed a collaborative program to align resources and fund projects to identify, develop, and validate new and existing m...

Mitigation of enteric methane (CH4) presents a feasible approach to curbing agriculture’s contribution to climate change. One intervention for reduction is dietary reformulation, which manipulates the composition of feedstuffs in ruminant diets to redirect fermentation processes toward low methane emissions. Examples include reducing the relative p...

It is estimated that enteric methane (CH 4) contributes about 70% of all livestock greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Several studies indicated that feed additives such as 3-nitrooxypropanol (3-NOP) and nitrate have great potential to reduce enteric emissions. The objective of this study was to determine the net effects of 3-NOP and nitrate on farmgat...

It is estimated that enteric methane (CH4) contributes about 70% of all livestock greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Several studies indicated that feed additives such as 3-nitrooxypropanol (3-NOP) and nitrate have great potential to reduce enteric emissions. The objective of this study was to determine the net effects of 3-NOP and nitrate on farmgate...

Livestock production contributed 3.9% to the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emission from the US in 2018. Most studies to mitigate GHG from livestock are focused on enteric methane because it contributes about 70% of all livestock GHG emissions. Mitigation options can be broadly categorized into dietary and rumen manipulation. Enteric methane emissions...

Dairy cows convert human-indigestible forages and byproducts nutrients into edible food for humans [1]. Because of microbiota located in their rumen, dairy cows can digest fibrous forages and feeds which are not exploited by humans and monogastric animals like pigs. Dairy cows in the U.S. have been fed byproduct feeds as part of their diet for deca...

Enteric methane (CH4) contributes about 70% of all livestock greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Feed additives such as 3-nitrooxypropanol (3-NOP) and nitrate have great potential to reduce enteric emissions. Our objective was to determine the net effects of 3-NOP and nitrate on the farmgate milk carbon footprint (CF) across various regions of the US....

Dairy cattle recycle nutrients found in human-inedible byproduct (BP) feeds to make nutritious milk, eliminating the need for disposal by alternative methods. Dairy nutrition consultants and feed industry representatives in the US were surveyed to quantify milking cow BP consumption. Survey data described 33.5% of US lactating cows and 35.7% of US...

Dairy production is an important source of nutrients in the global food supply, but environmental impacts are increasingly a concern of consumers, scientists, and policy-makers. Many decisions must be integrated to support sustainable production—which can be achieved using a simulation model. We provide an example of the Ruminant Farm Systems (RuFa...

Increasing consumer concern in greenhouse-gas (GHG) contributions from cattle is pushing the livestock industry to continue to improve their sustainability goals. As populations increase, particularly in low-income countries, the demand for animal-sourced foods will place further pressure to reduce emission intensity. Enteric methane (CH4) producti...

Enteric methane emissions are the single largest source of direct greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in beef and dairy value chains and a substantial contributor to anthropogenic methane emissions globally. In late 2019, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Rese...

Research, extension, and education communities often focus on the adoption of single strategies because they lack the tools to integrate opportunities at a farm level. Modeling is the best approach to synchronize the complex linkages between animal health, animal-based protein production, water resources, and soil health on dairy farms. Available f...

Sustainable milk production and consumption in low-income countries must address food security and climate change mitigation simultaneously. Socioeconomic sustainability is paramount in low-income countries, where milk production and consumption represent a vehicle to improve human nutrition and health, as well as the potential for economic opportu...

Sustainability in food systems has often been oversimplified. Many criteria are required to accurately assess the sustainability of foods, including multiple nutrition, economic, environmental, and social concerns. The US dairy industry is working to develop the methods and data needed to understand the benefits and impacts of dairy production and...

Dairy foods provide a significant portion of the recommended daily nutrition for much of the US population. Improving the availability of safe and nutritious dairy products and decreasing the environmental impact of the dairy community continue to be high priorities for both industry and the public sector. In recognition of these shared priorities,...

The global dairy sector is a major source of human nutrition and farmer livelihoods, while also generating manure, an important nutrient for crop production, but one that must be managed to minimize environmental risk. Manure management- manure handling, processing, storage and application- is an important part of managing a dairy system. Rising aw...

On-farm nutrition and management interventions to reduce enteric CH4 (eCH4 ) emission, the most abundant greenhouse gas from cattle, may also affect volatile solids and N excretion. The objective was to jointly quantify eCH4 emissions, digestible volatile solids (dVS) excretion and N excretion from dairy cattle, based on dietary variables and anima...

A resilient US dairy industry will be underpinned by forage and crop production systems that are economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable. Land use for production of perennial and annual forages and grains for dairy cattle must evolve in response to multiple food security and environmental sustainability issues. These include increas...

Economists, nutritionists, and geneticists have attempted to describe dairy cattle efficiency in simple, quantifiable terms. On-farm measures of dairy efficiency include physical feed efficiency, efficiency of nutrient usage, economic feed efficiency, total dairy enterprise efficiency, and lifetime efficiency. Each calculated measure of dairy effic...

The dairy sector contributes to global warming through enteric methane (CH4) emissions. Methane is also a loss of energy to the ruminant. Several studies have developed CH4 prediction models to assess mitigation strategies to reduce emissions. However, the majority of these models have low predictive ability or require numerous inputs that are ofte...

The objective of this study was to determine growth performance of growing beef steers when fed with a fibrolytic feed enzyme product in a completely randomized design. This growing beef study consisted of 60 group- penned Angus crossbred steers randomly assigned to treatments: control (C; no enzyme), low enzyme (LE), and high enzyme (HE). Five ani...

Enteric methane emission is a major greenhouse gas from livestock production systems worldwide. Dietary manipulation may be an effective emission-reduction tool; however, the associated costs may preclude its use as a mitigation strategy. Several studies have identified dietary manipulation strategies for the mitigation of emissions, but studies ex...

Lascano, G. J., Heinrichs, A. J. and Tricarico, J. M. 2015. Saccharomyces cerevisiae live culture affects rapidly fermentable carbohydrates fermentation profile in precision-fed dairy heifers. Can. J. Anim. Sci. 95: 117–127. The experimental objective was to determine the dose effect of live yeast culture (YC) on rumen fermentation profiles and mic...

The objective of this study was to compare nitrogen metabolism and urea kinetics between diets containing either rapidly degrading or slow degrading non-protein nitrogen (NPN) at varying levels of degradable intake protein (DIP). Treatments were slow release urea (Optigen®, Alltech, Inc.) fed at 1.01 and 1.14 and feed grade urea (UREA) fed at 0.89...

Many opportunities exist to reduce enteric methane (CH4) and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per unit of product from ruminant livestock. Research over the past century in genetics, animal health, microbiology, nutrition, and physiology has led to improvements in dairy production where intensively managed farms have GHG emissions as low as 1 k...

The goal of this review was to analyze published data related to mitigation of enteric methane (CH4) emissions from ruminant animals to document the most effective and sustainable strategies. Increasing forage digestibility and digestible forage intake was one of the major recommended CH4 mitigation practices. Although responses vary, CH4 emissions...

The goal of this review was to analyze published data on animal management practices that mitigate enteric methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from animal operations. Increasing animal productivity can be a very effective strategy for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per unit of livestock product. Improving the genetic potential...

Animal production is a significant source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide. Depending on the accounting approaches and scope of emissions covered, estimates by various sources (IPCC, FAO, EPA or others) place livestock contribution to global anthropogenic GHG emissions at between 7 and 18 percent. The current analysis was conducted to ev...

Although livestock production accounts for a sizeable share of global greenhouse gas emissions, numerous technical options have been identified to mitigate these emissions. In this review, a subset of these options, which have proven to be effective, are discussed. These include measures to reduce CH4 emissions from enteric fermentation by ruminant...

This experiment was conducted to determine the effects of slow release urea (SRU) and its interaction with crude protein (CP) level in the diet on N metabolism in Holstein steers. Eight rumen-cannulated Holstein steers (body weight 265 ± 18 kg) were used in a replicated 4 × 4 Latin square design with a 2 × 2 factorial treatment structure. Treatment...

FULL TEXT can be downloaded via: http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3288e/i3288e.pdf Animal production is a significant source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide. Depending on the accounting approaches and scope of emissions covered, estimates by various sources (IPCC, FAO, EPA or others) place livestock contribution to global anthropogenic GH...

The objective of this study was to examine the effects substituting soybean meal with a yeast-derived microbial protein (YMP) on rumen and blood metabolites, dry matter intake, and milk production of high-producing dairy cows. Sixteen Holstein cows (12multiparous and 4 primiparous), 93±37 DIM (mean ± SD) at the beginning of the experiment, were use...

Two experiments were conducted to examine the impact of source, urea (U) or Optigen II (O), and level of dietary NPN on performance (Exp.1) and N balance (Exp. 2) of growing cattle. Sixty Angus crossbred steers (initial BW = 353 ± 13.9 kg) were used to evaluate performance, and fed 1 of 3 steam-flaked corn based diets: U (U(1.2), 1.2% NPN), O (O(1....

The objective of this experiment was to determine the effects of 2 levels of dietary starch and the dose at which the effects of yeast culture (YC) derived from Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Yea-Sacc¹⁰²⁶, Alltech Inc., Nicholasville, KY) were maximized based on nutrient total-tract digestibility (AD), N utilization, and blood metabolites of precision-f...

An experiment was conducted to determine the effect of replacing soybean protein (SBM) with a slow-release urea (SR-U) in control-fed dairy heifers in the tropics. Eight Holstein heifers (237.6±5.45 kg of body weight) were allocated to 2 treatments in a crossover design. Treatments were control (SBM) and SR-U (Optigen II; Alltech Inc., Nicholasvill...

The objective of this field trial was to determine the effect of a controlled-release urea product (Optigen, Alltech Inc., Lexington, KY) on milk produc-tion in commercial Wisconsin dairy herd diets. Sixteen trial herds were randomly assigned to a treatment sequence, control (CON) to Optigen (OPT) or OPT to CON, in a crossover design with two 30-d...

Grain sorghum silage is an attractive supplement for cattle grazing marginal areas where sorghum has agronomic advantages with respect to corn. The objective of this study was to evaluate a microbial inoculant as a management tool to improve the quality of whole-plant (WP) and head-chop (HC) grain sorghum silages. A completely randomized design wit...

The objective of this study was to determine the growth performance of growing and finishing beef steers when fed with a fibrolytic feed enzyme (FFE) in a completely randomized design. This experiment was conducted during growing and finishing periods using 60 group-penned Angus crossbred steers ran-domly assigned to treatments: control (no enzyme)...

The objective was to determine the effects of three exogenous polysaccharide-degrading enzyme preparations (EPDE) on ruminal fermentation and forestomach and total tract digestion of dietary nutrients in dairy cows. Four late-lactation, ruminally and duodenally cannulated, Holstein cows were allocated to dietary treatments in a 4×4 Latin square des...

Research in the area of dietary enzyme supplements for ruminant diets has primarily focused on fibrolytic enzymes, while activities involved in the process of starch digestion have been largely ignored. Since starch represents a major component in diets fed to highly productive cattle, the use of enzymatic dietary supplements to manipulate starch d...

This study was completed to investigate whether a fibrolytic enzyme preparation with xylanase and cellulase activities (Fibrozyme™, Alltech Inc., Nicholasville, KY, USA), could stimulate in vitro rumen fermentation of alfalfa hay, grass hay and barley straw, and their isolated cell walls as neutral detergent fibre (NDF). Samples (500mg) of each sub...

Dietary carbohydrates have traditionally been considered as nothing more than energy yielding molecules and structural components. Recently, studies in the area of glycomics, or the study of oligosaccharides and carbohydrate polymers, demonstrate that non-digestible carbohydrates are central to many biological processes such as cellular metabolism,...

The effects on milk production and composition of an Aspergillus oryzae extract (Amaize, Alltech Biotechnol-ogy Inc., Nicholasville, KY) containing α-amylase activity were examined in 45 commercial dairy herds across the United States and Canada (approxi-mately 8,150 cows). Number of cows, days in milk, milk production, and composition data were co...

Three experiments were conducted to examine the effects of an Aspergillus oryzae extract containing alpha-amylase activity on performance and carcass characteristics of finishing beef cattle. In Exp. 1, 120 crossbred steers were used in a randomized complete block design to evaluate the effects of roughage source (alfalfa hay vs. cottonseed hulls)...

Two trials, each with 15 male Holstein calves, were conducted to determine whether the addition of amylase to calf starter could affect rumen development and calf performance. Amylase was added to calf starter at a rate of 0, 6, or 12 g/d, fed in the first 200 g of grain consumed each day. Grain and milk intake, fecal scores, and health were monito...

Introduction: Challenges defined Advances in our understanding of fiber digestion, analytical methods for useful fiber analysis and computer models for their practical application are transforming the practice of ration formulation for ruminants. Today, the profitability of ruminant production systems depends largely on maximizing productivity thro...

The objective of the study was to examine effect of backslop on the chemical and microbiological characteristics of fermented wheat (FW). Coarsely ground wheat was mixed with water (1:3 wt/wt) and inoculated with 6 log cfu ml(-1) each of an overnight culture of Lactobacillus plantarum and Pediococcus pentosaceus. Four fermentation treatments were c...

Twenty-four multiparous Holstein cows [body weight, 759 kg (SD = 30 kg); body condition score, 3.2 (SD = 0.13)] were used in a randomized complete block design to determine the effect of feeding alpha-amylase during the transition period on rumen fermentation, key metabolic indicators, and lactation performance. Cows were assigned to either a contr...

The effects of an Aspergillus oryzae extract containing alpha-amylase activity (Amaize™, Alltech Inc., Nicholasville, KY) were examined in vivo and in vitro. A lactating cow study employed 20 intact and four ruminally fistulated Holstein cows in a replicated 4 × 4 Latin-square design to examine the effects of four concentrations of dietary Amaize™...

This study employed two commercial enzyme preparations to examine the effects of endoglucanase, xylanase or their combination on in vitro volatile fatty acid (VFA) production by ruminal microbial populations. Batch ruminal cultures were established with one of various feedstuffs or with a fescue hay-based diet and ruminal fluid from a heifer fed a...

The effects of glycosylation on the stability of an exogenous xylanase exposed to proteases or rumen fluid in vitro, were examined. Commercial xylanase produced by Trichoderma longibrachiatum was purified by gel filtration chromatography, followed by ammonium sulfate precipitation and dialysis. A partially purified xylanase, consisting of proteins...

The effect of pentoxifylline on the spontaneous and follicular fluid (hFF)-induced acrosome reaction (AR) was studied in an attempt to identify those patients who would benefit from the use of pentoxifylline as an AR-stimulating agent. Pentoxifylline (1 mg/ml) produced no significant increase over spontaneous AR at any of the time points studied (6...