Worries grow that climate change will quietly steal nutrients from major food crops
Increasing carbon dioxide tinkers with plant chemistry in ways not well understood
By Susan Milius
2017 was a good year for worrying about nutrient losses that might come with a changing climate.
The idea that surging carbon dioxide levels could stealthily render some major crops less nutritious has long been percolating in plant research circles. “It’s literally a 25-year story, but it has come to a head in the last year or so,” says Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist with the U.S. Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Md.
Concerns are growing that wheat, rice and some other staple crops could, pound for pound, deliver less of some minerals and protein in decades to come than those crops do today. In 2017, three reports highlighted what changes in those crops could mean for global health. Also this year, an ambitious analysis made an almost-global assessment of sources of selenium, a trace element crucial for health, and warned of regions where climate change might cut the element’s availability (SN: 4/1/17, p. 14).