‘Zipcode lottery’ of nutrient intake from crops revealed in new study — ScienceDaily

The amount of nutrients people get from the crops that they eat is a type of ‘postcode lottery’, according to new research that has analysed thousands of cereal grains and soils as part of a project to tackle hidden hunger in Malawi and Ethiopia.

A global team led by the University of Nottingham and its Future Food Beacon including academics and researchers from Addis Ababa University (AAU) in Ethiopia and Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) in Malawi, working on the GeoNutrition project, have discovered more about the relation between soils, crops and micronutrient deficiencies among people living there. Their findings have been published today in the journal Nature.

The team analysed the grain of more than 3000 cereal crop samples from farmers’ fields in Ethiopia and Malawi. They found that the amount of the dietary micronutrients calcium, iron,…

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