Journal article
Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition
SS Myers, A Zanobetti, I Kloog, P Huybers, ADB Leakey, AJ Bloom, E Carlisle, LH Dietterich, G Fitzgerald, T Hasegawa, NM Holbrook, RL Nelson, MJ Ottman, V Raboy, H Sakai, KA Sartor, J Schwartz, S Seneweera, M Tausz, Y Usui
Nature | Published : 2014
DOI: 10.1038/nature13179
Abstract
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 C 3 grains and legumes as their primary dietary source of zinc and iron. Here we report that C 3 grains and legumes have lower concentrations of zinc and iron when grown under field conditions at the elevated atmospheric CO 2 concentration predicted for the middle of this century. C 3 crops other than legumes also have lower concentrations of protein, whereas C 4 crops seem to be less affected. Differences between cultivars of a single crop suggest that breeding for dec..
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Awarded by National Science Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank L. S. De la Puente, M. Erbs, A. Fangmeier, P. Hogy, M. Lieffering, R. Manderscheid, H. Pleijel and S. Prior for sharing data from their groups with us; H. Nakamura, T. Tokida, C. Zhu and S. Yoshinaga for contributions to the rice FACE project; and M. Hambidge, W. Willett, D. Schrag, K. Brown, R. Wessells, N. Fernando, J. Peerson and B. Kimball for reviews of earlier drafts or conceptual contributions to this project. V. R. thanks A. L. Harvey for her efforts in producing the phytate data included here. The National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (Japan) provided the grain samples of some rice cultivars. We thank the following for financial support of this work: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the Winslow Foundation; the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture (Australia), the International Plant Nutrition Institute, (Australia), the Grains Research and Development Corporation (Australia), the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Japan); the National Science Foundation (NSF IOS-08-18435); USDA NIFA 2008-35100-044459; research at SoyFACE was supported by the US Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service; Illinois Council for Food and Agricultural Research (CFAR); Department of Energy's Office of Science (BER) Midwestern Regional Center of the National Institute for Climatic Change Research at Michigan Technological University, under Award Number DEFC02- 06ER64158; and the National Research Initiative of Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program Grant no. 2010-65114-20343 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Early stages of this work received support from Harvard Catalyst vertical bar The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center (National Center for Research Resources and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health Award 8UL1TR000170-05).