When you ask Dr. Troy Rowan how he ended up in the world of cattle genetics, he’ll tell you he “came to the field from the field.”

Rowan, now an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, grew up surrounded by cattle on his family’s Charolais operation in Iowa. His family has been farming and ranching there for more than a century — long enough for the rhythms of agriculture to get in his blood.

“I thought for a hot minute that I wanted to be a human doctor,” he laughed. “But thankfully, organic chemistry brought me back down to earth.” Instead, Rowan found his calling in animal science, earning his Ph.D. in beef cattle genetics from the University of Missouri before joining the University of Tennessee in 2021.

Even as a kid, he was fascinated by numbers. “My dad was a beef semen salesman,” Rowan recalls. “We’d drive around breeding cows, and I’d flip through those bull books full of breeding values and genetic estimates — and I’d memorize them like the backs of baseball cards.”

That early fascination with data and breeding potential set the stage for his career. Today, Rowan studies how the genetic makeup of cattle can not only shape their productivity and efficiency but also help reduce one of agriculture’s most stubborn climate challenges: methane emissions.

Measuring What Matters

Rowan was a featured speaker at the 2025 State of the Science Summit at UC Davis. The 2026 State of the Science Summit, scheduled for June 16–18, 2026 will again center on advancing research in livestock methane mitigation.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas produced naturally in the rumen of cattle as they digest feed. Reducing those emissions is one of the livestock industry’s biggest opportunities — and challenges — for climate progress. Rowan believes genetics can help move the needle.

“As animal geneticists, we know that if a trait can be measured on enough animals, and if it has a genetic component, we can move the needle over time,” he explained on this episode of CLEAR Conversations podcast. “That’s what we’ve done for thousands of years — selecting cattle that are calmer, produce more milk, grow faster, and have better carcasses. Methane is just another trait we can select for.”

The catch? Getting the data.

“Measuring methane on enough animals to build genetic selection tools is a tall challenge,” Rowan said. “We need tens of thousands of records to really understand the heritability and variation of the trait.”

Collecting that information, especially on cattle that spend most of their lives grazing on pasture, is complex and expensive. But Rowan says there’s a growing, coordinated effort to develop technologies that can measure emissions more efficiently and at scale.

“We’re still a few years away from having those tools in producers’ hands,” he said, “but the progress is happening.”

For many ranchers, the practicality — and profitability — of adopting new tools matters just as much as the science behind them.

“For a producer to add something new to their breeding program, there has to be a clear economic signal,” Rowan said. “They’ll pick up a tool if there’s a clear way for them to get paid for it.”

He expects that as markets evolve around methane mitigation, producers will have more incentive to incorporate low-emission traits into their selection objectives. But even before those markets mature, he sees other benefits that could motivate adoption.

“These low-methane animals also tend to be more efficient users of feed and forage,” he said.

Rowan’s research also explores how environment interacts with genetics — a critical piece for beef cattle raised in such diverse conditions across the U.S.

“In Tennessee, we’ve got tons of grass and rainfall,” he said. “Compare that to out West, where cattle are grazing in much drier, more extensive rangeland systems. The way cows digest different types of forage adds another level of complexity to how we model methane.”

His team is also diving into the rumen microbiome — the community of microbes, bacteria, and archaea that live in a cow’s stomach and enable it to turn grass into energy.

“We’re trying to understand how a cow’s genetics influence the makeup of its microbiome,” Rowan explained. “If we can understand that connection, we can start to predict how changes in the rumen community affect efficiency and methane production.”

It’s detailed, data-heavy work — but Rowan’s enthusiasm for it is infectious. “Job security for a young professor,” he joked. “There’s a lot to learn.”

Collaboration at the Core

That spirit of collaboration was on full display at the 2025 State of the Science Summit at UC Davis, when the podcast was filmed, and where Rowan joined researchers, producers, and industry leaders from around the world to discuss the latest in livestock sustainability.

“I told someone last night — I don’t know 80% of the people here, and I don’t know 70% of the science they’re talking about,” Rowan said with a smile. “That’s what makes it so encouraging. You’ve got geneticists, social scientists, finance experts, all attacking one big problem from different angles.”

For him, that cross-pollination of ideas is encouraging. “It gives me a lot of energy,” he said. 

As researchers develop new tools and technologies, another challenge looms: communicating the science to both producers and the public.

“There’s no such thing as ‘the general public,’” Rowan said. “Different audiences need different messages. But what’s most important is helping people understand that this is science. There’s serious, high-level work going into solving these problems — and producers are part of that.”

That connection, he added, is crucial. “We can talk all day at a summit like this, but if the solutions don’t make sense for producers, it’s all for nothing. We have to have them at the table all the way along the line is so important.”

As the technology for measuring and analyzing emissions improves, Rowan believes the tools of genetic selection will become more powerful — and more accessible.

“Right now, the equipment we use to collect methane data is expensive and really only practical in a research setting,” he said. “But that’s changing fast. The price is shrinking, the usability is improving, and that’s really exciting as we start to take these things about of our university research herds and out towards a larger producer audience.”

And through it all, his enthusiasm never wanes. When asked what he loves most about his work, Rowan doesn’t hesitate.

“I’ve got the best job,” he said. “I get to wake up, think about cows all day, get paid for it, and travel the world talking about them. It doesn’t get better than that.”