Photo/Illutration Ryo Kubota, left, and Yuya Watanabe grow a red alga species called Asparagopsis taxiformis in a tank on a trial basis on March 28 in Tosa, Kochi Prefecture. (Kazunori Haga)

In the battle against climate change, a startup company is using a new technology to mass-produce seaweed that can help reduce methane gas emitted in cattle burps.

Sunshiki Co. plans to commercialize the method created by a team of researchers primarily from Kochi University. The researchers found that certain seaweed added to the diets of cattle slashes greenhouse gas emissions in the bovines’ belches.

According to the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization in Ibaraki Prefecture, methane’s greenhouse effect is 28 times that of carbon dioxide.

A dairy cow is believed to release 500 liters of methane per day through its burps.

Belches of ruminant animals, including cattle, account for an estimated 5 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions around the world.

A red alga species called Asparagopsis taxiformis found around the Japanese archipelago and elsewhere in the Pacific is seen as an effective countermeasure.

Research abroad showed that when the alga is mixed into the cattle’s feed, their methane emissions were reduced by more than 90 percent.

Many businesses and research institutes are working on farming the seaweed variety.

Masanori Hiraoka, an oceanic botany professor at Kochi University’s Science Research Center, and his colleagues collected the alga for spores from the seabed off Susaki, Kochi Prefecture.

By culturing the spores via two separate processes, the team proliferated the variety, raising the alga’s volume tenfold within 10 days in an experiment in November.

The team’s outcome was presented in March at a conference of the Japanese Society of Phycology held in Kobe University.

The scientists’ method caught the attention of Sunshiki founder Ryo Kubota, 29, who received support from the entrepreneur assistance organization FoundX operated by the University of Tokyo.

“Few start-ups handled seaweed in Japan then, offering a big chance for me,” Kubota recalled.

Demand for fodder with methane-reducing effects is so high that one estimate projects the market scale for such products will reach 300 billion yen ($1.96 billion) in 2030.

Kubota tied up with Yuya Watanabe, 23, a member of Hiraoka’s lab, to launch Sunshiki.

They are currently looking to pitch a food supplement using the red alga to slash methane emissions.

A verification test is under way in Kochi Prefecture, and the alga is expected to be commercially available as early as next year.

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