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During the Anthropocene Epoch, human activities from burning fossil fuels are emitting greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide at such an accelerated pace that it is negatively impacting plants’ mechanisms of acquiring nutrients from the soil, according to a recent study published in Trends in Plant Science. According to the researchers who are based in France, elevated CO2 levels particularly lowers the nitrogen content of plant tissues but the reasons behind this still remain a mystery.
Plants being nitrogen deficient also means they will provide less nutrition and proteins to human beings. “Two main nutrients that are essential for human nutrition may be affected by this phenomenon,” said lead author of the study, Alain Gojon from the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, France, in a press release.
“The first one is proteins built from nitrogen. In developing countries this can be a big issue, because many diets in these countries aren’t rich in proteins and plants grown at elevated CO2 can have 20% to 30% less protein. The second one is iron. Iron deficiency already affects an estimated 2 billion people worldwide,” he added.
While elevated CO2 levels can help plants in their photosynthesis processes, human beings emitting such high levels of greenhouse gasses will still make them less rich in nutrients and minerals. A vast majority of crops and plants cannot obtain nitrogen directly from the air. Instead, they rely on nitrates and ammonia that are produced by bacteria living in the soil.
Only legumes like peas, beans, lentils and an ancient plant called Azolla have the ability to directly obtain nitrogen from the air with the help of nitrogen-fixing bacteria that lives within their cells. However, all plants absorb minerals like iron and phosphorous only from the soil through the plants’ roots.
“What is clear is that the nutrient composition of the main crops used worldwide, such as rice and wheat, is negatively impacted by the elevation of CO2. This will have a strong impact on food quality and global food security,” said co-author of the study, Antoine Martin, who works at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, in an official statement that was released by Cell Press.
