Recent research showed that increased levels of carbon dioxide are likely to boost productivity at the cost of nutrition. In soybeans, high levels of carbon dioxide decrease the amount of iron and zinc in the seed to almost eight to nine percent. However, the increased temperatures have an opposite effect.
After many field trials, it has been observed that if the temperatures are risen by 3°C, it might help in preserving seed quality. This can happen by offsetting the effect of carbon dioxide which tends to make food less nutritious.
A principal investigator, Ivan Baxter at the Danforth Center said that Iron and Zinc are essential for both plant and human health. He also mentioned that plants have numerous methods that affect the accumulation of Iron and zinc in the seeds. The environmental factors might influence these methods in different ways, thus making it very hard to foresee how the changing climate would affect our food.
Soybeans were tested in real-world field conditions at the Soybean Free-Air-Concentration Experiment (SoyFACE) to artificially increase carbon dioxide and temperature to futuristic levels. By this study, a conclusion can be drawn that a trade-off between optimizing yields for global change and seed nutritional quality may exist.
All this process is done in a very controlled way wherein altering the growth environment of crops is done in an agronomically relevant situations.
All in all, we can say that, rise in carbon dioxide levels might boost productivity but have to compromise on the nutrition. However, a new study in Plant Journal from the University of Illinois, U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service suggests that this seems to be an incomplete picture of the complex environmental interactions that might affect the crops in future. Rise in temperatures might just benefit nutrition but at the expense of lower productivity.
Image Credit: Iowa Soybean Association
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