Wheat Field Study Shows Food Quality Will Suffer with Rising CO2

A wheat field test-study led by University of California, Davis plant scientist Arnold Bloom, has, for the first time, showed that elevated levels of carbon dioxide inhibit plants' assimilation of nitrate into proteins, indicating that the nutritional quality of food crops is at risk as climate change intensifies.

The researchers examined samples of wheat grown in 1996 and 1997 and documented that three different measures of nitrate assimilation affirmed that the elevated level of atmospheric carbon dioxide had inhibited nitrate assimilation into protein in the field-grown wheat. Bloom said that the field results are consistent with findings from previous laboratory studies showing the physiological mechanisms responsible for carbon dioxide's inhibition of nitrate assimilation in leaves. He added that other studies have also shown that protein concentrations in the grain of wheat, rice and barley, as well as potato tubers, decline, on average, by approximately 8 percent under elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

For more details about this research, read the news release at: http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10886.