Nitrate decreases methane production also by increasing methane oxidation through stimulating NC10 population in ruminal culture

AMB Express

Table 6 Effects of treatments on the number of total bacteria and the relative proportion of methanogen and NC10 in total bacteria

	Treatments				SEM	P value
	Control	NaNO₃	NH₄Cl	NaNO₃ + NH₄Cl	SEM	P value
Methanogen	0.99^a	0.78^b	0.93^a	0.70^b	0.040	0.007
NC10	0.98^b	1.25^a	1.07^b	1.26^a	0.040	0.005
Total bacteria (log copies/mL fluid)	9.79	9.49	9.58	9.77	0.079	0.373

The proportion of methanogen or NC10 in total bacteria was detected by relative quantification real-time PCR (Zhu et al. 2014), therefore there was no unit for this index. Values with different lowercase superscripts in the same row differ significantly (P < 0.05)