Rising CO2 threatens human nutrition

By S. Myers, A. Zanobetti, I. Kloog, P. Huybers, Andrew D. B. Leakey, Arnold J. Bloom, E. Carlisle, Lee H. Dietterich, Glenn J. Fitzgerald, Toshihiro Hasegawa and 10 more. Nature, 2014

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Dietary deficiencies of zinc and iron are a substantial global public health problem. An estimated two billion people suffer these deficiencies, causing a loss of 63 million life-years annually. Most of these people depend on C3 grains and legumes as their primary dietary source of zinc and iron. Here we report that C3 grains and legumes have lower concentrations of zinc and iron when grown under field conditions at the elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration predicted for the middle of this century. C3 crops other than legumes also have lower concentrations of protein, whereas C4 crops seem to be less affected. Differences between cultivars of a single crop suggest that breeding for decreased sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 concentration could partly address these new challenges to global health.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Ecology, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/50f73c22cd48fa6a1f74e6f140597b56cfbce8f1

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Citations in the corpus

Climate Change, Global Food Security, and the U.S. Food System (2015, background): “One study found that the concentration of iron and zinc found in staple grains and legumes is reduced under elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide, a driver of climate change (Myers et al. 2014).”
Climate Change and Global Food Systems: Potential Impacts on Food Security and Undernutrition. (2017, background): “CO2 concentrations of 550 ppm can lead to 3–11% decreases of zinc and iron concentrations in cereal grains and legumes (109) and 5–10% reductions in the concentration of phosphorus, potassium, calcium, sulfur, magnesium, iron, zinc, copper, and manganese across a wide range of crops under more extre”
Food Security in the Face of Salinity, Drought, Climate Change, and Population Growth (2016, background): “Such crops would also be important contributors in reducing the micronutrient limitations already in place and destined to increase as C3 grains are subjected to higher atmospheric CO2 levels (Myers et al., 2014).”
Preserving the nutritional quality of crop plants under a changing climate: importance and strategies (2019, methodology): “However, improved plant growth at eCO2 contrasts with reducing grain quality responses, which are being recognized across a range of plant species (Dong et al. 2018b; Myers et al. 2014).”
Nitrogen use in the global food system: past trends and future trajectories of agronomic performance, pollution, trade, and dietary demand (2016, background): “Therefore, without N limitation cropping systems in certain regions could be more able to take advantage of the CO2 fertilization effect and potentially increase their yields by up to 20% [17], improving N use efficiency (NUE) and water use efficiency [18] albeit with a possible deterioration in key”