AGRIBUSINESS: Rising temperatures may safeguard crop nutrition as climate changes.

AGRIBUSINESS: Rising temperatures may safeguard crop nutrition as climate changes.Hotter temperatures may offset the negative effects of higher carbon dioxide levels on seed quality.Recent research has shown that rising carbon dioxide levels will likely boost yields, but at the cost of nutrition. A new study in Plant Journal from the University of Illinois, U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), and Donald Danforth Plant Science Center suggests that this is an incomplete picture of the complex environmental interactions that will affect crops in the future -- and rising temperatures may actually benefit nutrition but at the expense of lower yields. Two years of field trials show that increasing temperatures by about 3 degrees Celsius may help preserve seed quality, offsetting the effects of carbon dioxide that make food less nutritious. In soybeans, elevated carbon dioxide levels decreased the amount of iron and zinc in the seed by about 8 to 9 percent, but increased temperatures had the opposite effect.Iron and zinc are essential for both plant and human health.