From the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers have some bad news for future farmers and eaters: As carbon dioxide levels rise this century, some grains and legumes will become significantly less nutritious than they are today.
The new findings are reported in the journal Nature. Eight institutions, from Australia, Israel, Japan and the United States, contributed to the analysis.
The researchers looked at multiple varieties of wheat, rice, field peas, soybeans, maize and sorghum grown in fields with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels like those expected in the middle of this century. (Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are currently approaching 400 parts per million, and are expected to rise to 550 ppm by 2050.)
The teams simulated high CO2 levels in open-air fields using a system called Free Air Concentration Enrichment (FACE), which pumps out, monitors and adjusts ground-level atmospheric CO2 to simulate future conditions. In this study, all other growing conditions (sunlight, soil, water, temperature) were the same for plants grown at high-CO2 and those used as controls.
The experiments revealed that the nutritional quality of a number of the world’s most important crop plants dropped in response to elevated CO2.
The study contributed “more than tenfold more data regarding both the zinc and iron content of the edible portions of crops grown under FACE conditions” than available from previous studies, the team wrote.
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“When we take all of the FACE experiments we’ve got around the world, we see that an awful lot of our key crops have lower concentrations of zinc and iron in them (at high CO2),” said University of Illinois plant biology and Institute for Genomic Biology professor Andrew Leakey, an author on the study. “And zinc and iron deficiency is a big global health problem already for at least 2 billion people.”
Zinc and iron went down significantly in wheat, rice, field peas and soybeans. Wheat and rice also saw notable declines in protein content at higher CO2.
“Across a diverse set of environments in a number of countries, we see this decrease in quality,” Leakey said.
Nutrients in sorghum and maize remained relatively stable at higher CO2 levels because these crops use a type of photosynthesis, called C4, which already concentrates carbon dioxide in their leaves, Leakey said.
“C4 is sort of a fuel-injected photosynthesis that maize and sorghum and millet have,” he said. “Our previous work here at Illinois has shown that their photosynthesis rates are not stimulated by being at elevated CO2. They already have high CO2 inside their leaves.”
More research is needed to determine how crops grown in developing regions of the world will respond to higher atmospheric CO2, Leakey said.
“It’s important that we start to do these experiments in tropical climates with tropical soils, because that’s just a terrible gap in our knowledge, given that that’s where food security is already the biggest issue,” he said.
The collaboration included researchers from Harvard University (which led the effort); Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beer Sheva, Israel; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the University of California, Davis; the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service; the National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences in Ibaraki, Japan; the University of Melbourne, Australia; the University of Arizona; the University of Pennsylvania; and The Nature Conservancy, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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Not to worry, corporate farming will be banned long before we get to that point. EPA is already working on the endangered snails in rivers covering whole states so the groundwork is going into place to begin the assault. WUWT readers are falling behind on the river strategies at EPA.
This nutrient-deficiency hypothesis is fatally flawed by the “everything else being equal” fallacy that is the central pillar of the eco disaster prophecy scam industry.
Michael Cohen said @ur momisugly May 7, 2014 at 3:42 pm
Only if I have to, even though it’s really, really yummy 😉 Marxist-Lentillists eat your heart out :-)))
The iron and zinc in wheat and rice is mostly in the bran and germ, both of which are removed in the manufacture of food-like substances which is all that most people seem to want these days (poor fools). That is why the need for supplementing them with Fe and Zn.
Where the soil is deficient in zinc, the plants will take up cadmium instead from the superphosphate used to fertilise the crop. About thirty years ago we saw a ban on the sale of sheep kidneys here in the Land of Under because they were concentrating the cadmium in those organs. Near broke my heart; I love sheep kidneys (with bacon and eggs of course).
Iron is all but ubiquitous in soils; just need to tickle the soil biology along a little to release it in an available form that the crop can use. Mainly by applying agricultural lime to acid soils, or by not applying it to soils that are already between pH 5 – 6.5. But then farmers already know that.
A quick search reveals, some forward thinking ?
https://www.croptrust.org/content/svalbard-global-seed-vault
Excerpt:
“Svalbard Global Seed Vault Deep inside a mountain on a remote island in the Svalbard archipelago, halfway between mainland Norway and the North Pole, lies the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. It is a fail-safe, state-of-the-art seed storage facility, built to stand the test of time – and of natural or manmade disasters.
Permanent protection for the world’s food crops The purpose of the Vault is to store duplicates (‘back ups’) of all seed samples from the world’s crop collections. Permafrost and thick rock ensure that, even in the case of a power outage, the seed samples will remain frozen. The Vault can therefore be considered the ultimate insurance policy for the world’s food supply. It will secure, for centuries, millions of seeds representing every important crop variety available in the world today.
Scientists have long been alarmed by the loss of crop diversity and the vulnerability of the world’s seed collections…………..”
Dinosaurs suffered through a lack of sufficient nutrition due to high co2 levels. Their governments were forced to act then to reduce co2 levels. Since then their numbers thrived up till the present day.
Réchauffement climatique : l’innocence du … – YouTube
► 5:34► 5:34
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNAoG_E7eyk
23 sept. 2013 – Ajouté par LibertarienTV
Le CO2 a certes augmenté depuis le XIXe siècle, passant de 300 ppm à 400 ppm mais l’effet de serre dû au CO2 …
Re: Jimbo says
“Since then their numbers thrived up till the present day.”
Ate myself one of them giant chickens just the other day. Smokin’ good!
“Walter Sobchak says:
May 7, 2014 at 2:18 pm
Cereals have never been a major source od dietary iron. That’s why you’re supposed to eat your spinach.”
Do say that to someone (Me) who suffers from haemochromatosis.
When I accessed the article there was another related article in the sidebar:
Elevated CO2 further lengthens growing season under warming conditions
Melissa Reyes-Fox1*, Heidi Steltzer2*, M. J. Trlica3, Gregory S. McMaster4, Allan A. Andales5, Dan R. LeCain6 & Jack A. Morgan doi:10.1038/nature13207
I just scanned both very fast right now and may or may not get to a slow reading, but it looks like there is a bit of thought needed to work out the net change in nutrient yield per cultivated area per unit water requirement per growing season etc. The decreases in per plant nutrient composition could be offset (or exacerbated) by changes in water requirements, heat resilience, growing season length, nutrient requirements etc. If somebody wanted to look over this issue it would be interesting.
There is no need for vitamins, like many things the details within the literature from numerous other studies are the opposite of what the disaster, give me more research money folks say..
Averaged across the three plant parts and both soil N levels, the CO2-induced changes in micronutrient concentrations within the wheat plants were: -12.4% (Fe), +20.9% (Mn), +9.0% (Zn) and +20.1% (Cu).
What it means
For three of the four micronutrients investigated in this study, atmospheric CO2 enrichment led to concentration increases, reminiscent of the findings of Lieffering et al. (2004), who observed CO2-induced increases in the concentrations of six out of six micronutrients (Zn, Mn, Cu, B, Mo, plus Fe) in a study of rice grains
What would be the nutritional deficiency for the increased world population in their 2050 unenhanced CO2 environment; of not having ANY food at all for a good fraction of those people ??
“Walter Sobchak says:
May 7, 2014 at 2:18 pm
Cereals have never been a major source od dietary iron. That’s why you’re supposed to eat your spinach.”
I meant *don’t* say that to someone (Me) who suffers from haemochromatosis.
550 ppm y 2050?
That is a 25% increase, 150 ppm in 36 years.
Bunk on that. We are not increasing CO2 at an accelerating rate.
As to the study, we have seen enough studies by AGW promoters that skirt the truth or flat-out deceive that I doubt its methods, accuracy and conclusions.
I remember a critique of one of these experiments from Dr. Idso at co2science.org years ago. Does the paper make clear that 550 ppm CO2 was maintained for a full 24hr day?
In a past experiment which CO2science criticized, the concentration of CO2 varied.
I’m just concerned about all the carbon poison they pumped into the air to do this study.
Well, that sucks. Is it a net loss, looking at yield increases?
If they held all conditions the same, the faster growing, larger growing CO2 enriched plants were starved on nutrients – so they grew bigger, but sucked all the nutrients out of the soil before they achieved their full growth.
You have to repeatedly fertilise food crops during growth to ensure they reach maximum potential. I bet they didn’t.
This study is silly. Out of 10 nutrients in rice, it cited 3 that decreased (zinc, iron & protein) and concluded it is less nutritious. Rice has negligible amount of zinc to begin with. The decreases in iron and protein are small at 5.2% and 7.8% respectively. The study failed to mention the other nutrients. Does rice have more carbohydrates, vitamin B-6 and magnesium? BTW plants grow faster in higher CO2. Farms will be more productive and feed more people.
Further to my comment, to explain – if the plants sucked all the nutrients out of the “test” soil, but the CO2 enhanced plants grew larger, the same quantity of nutrients were simply diluted in a bigger volume of plant material.
Ok so ONE A Day Multivitamin, problem, if a problem really develops, solved.
The study said:
“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.”
These people are deficient in zinc and iron precisely because they depend on rice which has negligible zinc and small amount of iron. They have to eat 5 kg of rice everyday to get the recommended value for iron. They will become obese before they become iron sufficient since that is almost 3 times the recommended calorie intake for normal weight humans.
i realize I am stealing this but I can’t think of any other more appropriate comment
Oh! Noes! It’s worse then we thought!!!
Eugene WR Gallun
Maybe they should look at the decrease in nutrients since the 1960s. USDA data show a 20-50% drop in nutrient levels in virtually all foods. Why? You pay people by the pound they will optimize their output by the pound. “Pith” and water content are not very nutrient dense. You get the behaviour your reward. No need to blame CO2.
Eric Worrall says:
May 7, 2014 at 7:33 pm
That’s sort of what I was thinking too. Not sure if it’s actually so, but it seems like an important point to look into.
Thanks.
Boy, since they held soil constant, and the non C4 plants grew a lot bigger, I bet they just depleted the soil in those nutrients. Not a problem for a modern farmer.