Multispecies Forage Swards to Mitigate Enteric Methane Emissions and Enhance Productivity in Cattle

Ruminant livestock production faces increasing pressure to limit its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining productivity and profitability. Enteric methane released by grazing cattle represents both an environmental challenge and a loss of feed energy efficiency. Recent research highlights multispecies forage swards, combinations of grasses, legumes, and forbs, as promising nature-based strategies to improve productivity, ecosystem resilience, and nutrient cycling. However, the mechanisms through which botanical and functional diversity in pastures influence methane generation, animal performance, and soil–plant feedbacks remain poorly understood. Most existing studies are fragmented and focus on specific feed additives or monocultures, rather than examining whole-sward designs under variable management and climates. A coordinated effort is needed to integrate emerging multidisciplinary findings on the interplay between sward composition, forage chemistry, grazing dynamics, and rumen microbial processes. Scaling these mechanisms from individual swards to the whole farm enterprise is essential, since enterprise-level methane intensity and net carbon balance, not plot-level effects alone, determine a producer’s true climate footprint.This Research Topic aims to consolidate and advance understanding of how plant diversity within grazed swards affects enteric methane emissions and productivity in beef and dairy systems. It seeks to bring together evidence on the biological, ecological, and physiological mechanisms driving methane mitigation, nutrient use efficiency, and animal health. By combining field experiments, controlled feeding studies, and systems modeling, this Research Topic will identify pathways and management strategies that sustain productivity while lowering methane intensity. The ultimate objective is to provide an evidence base for designing climate-smart pastures that align agricultural productivity with environmental stewardship. Beyond the pasture scale, this Research Topic situates sward-level findings within enterprise-wide carbon budgeting, connecting enteric methane mitigation to the farm’s full carbon cycle, soil sequestration, forage production, and herd-level emissions, to inform climate accounting across an entire operation.To gather further insights into sustainable grazing systems and forage-diversity mechanisms, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:• Effects of multispecies swards on methane yield, methane intensity, and productivity in beef and dairy cattle;• Structural, chemical, and phenological characteristics of diverse swards influencing rumen fermentation and nutrient use;• Roles of plant secondary metabolites and sward architecture in modulating microbial activity and enteric emissions;• Grazing behavior, intake dynamics, and animal welfare responses to diverse pastures;• Integration of sward diversity in models predicting methane emissions across management systems and climatic zones;• Enterprise- and company-scale carbon accounting linking pasture management, enteric methane, soil carbon sequestration, and net greenhouse gas budgets across whole production system. Topic editors: Giulia Ferronato, Edward H. Cabezas-Garcia Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83373/multispecies-forage-swards-to-mitigate-enteric-methane-emissions-and-enhance-productivity-in-cattle