Agronomic Practices to Improve the Nutritional Quality of Crops under a Changing Climate

土壤肥力和养分管理可影响作物质量，从而影响人类健康。谷物中微量营养素，特别是锌的生物利用率通常很低，这可能导致饮食主要以谷物为主的人营养不良。作为世界领先的谷物产品生产国和出口国，加拿大正面临着管理土壤以提高作物营养质量和健康的基本和迫切需要。适当的农艺做法可以帮助加拿大农民种植蛋白质和微量营养素生物利用率高、潜在有毒微量元素风险低的谷物。这些营养质量指标已经被认为是市场上的溢价，或可能在未来被包括在内。气候变化导致的干旱、洪涝等极端气候条件的频繁发生，使作物营养品质受到环境和基因型的交互影响，从而使作物营养品质的研究更具挑战性。与单一栽培或传统系统相比，多样化轮作和有机食品生产系统等做法被认为可以提高作物质量。然而，从未在国家或全球范围内进行过定量分析。过去的研究表明，在加拿大小麦种质的粮食锌浓度显着的基因型变异。该计划将测试现代小麦品种，产量是老品种的两倍，是否能维持营养品质的高变化，以及灌浆期间锌的积累是否由土壤直接吸收或从营养器官转运决定。 这个发现补助金计划是一个重要的里程碑，沿着沿着我的实验室的旅程，其长期目标是了解土壤-粮食-环境-健康关系中的营养循环，并制定最佳管理实践，以确保气候变化下的粮食和营养安全。在接下来的五年里，我的研究计划将量化作物轮作，有机农业和肥料管理策略对作物质量和人类健康的影响从食品消费的角度来看。这项研究将进一步发展有效的土壤肥力管理，以提高营养质量。这将通过一系列实地和温室研究，结合尖端的同位素示踪技术、元分析的最新方法和人类健康评估工具来实现。 该计划的成果将推进土壤肥力管理如何通过与环境和基因型的相互作用影响养分生物利用度的知识，并促进提高谷物营养质量的实践。这项研究将使两个博士，两名硕士和五名本科生接受土壤肥力，植物营养和人类健康新技术技能的跨学科培训。研究结果将有助于加拿大谷物行业在不断变化的气候条件下继续保持世界级的生产标准。

Soil fertility and nutrient management can influence crop quality and thus, human health. Bioavailability of micronutrients, especially zinc, in cereal grains is generally low, which can result in malnutrition deficiencies in humans whose diets are primarily cereal-based. As a world-leading producer and exporter of cereal products, Canada is facing the essential and urgent need to manage soils for crop nutritional quality and health. Appropriate agronomic practices can assist Canadian farmers to grow cereal grains with high protein and micronutrient bioavailability and low risk of potentially toxic trace elements. These nutritional quality indexes are already considered as a premium value in the marketplace or likely included in the future. The more frequent extreme weather conditions of drought or flooding resulted from climate change make it more challenging due to the interactive effect of environment and genotype on crop nutritional quality. Practices such as diversified crop rotation and organic food production systems are thought to improve crop quality compared to monoculture or conventional systems. However, a quantitative analysis at the national or global scale has never been done. Past studies indicate significant genotypic variation in grain zinc concentration in Canadian wheat germplasm. This program will test if modern wheat varieties, that double the yield of old varieties, can sustain high variation in nutrition quality, and whether zinc accumulation during grain filling is determined by direct soil uptake or translocation from the vegetative organs. This Discovery Grant program is a key milestone along the journey of my laboratory toward its long-term goal of understanding nutrient cycling in soil-food-environment-health nexus and developing best management practices to ensure food and nutrition securities under the changing climate. Over the next five years, my research program will quantify the impact of crop rotation, organic farming and fertilizer management strategies on crop quality and human health from a food consumption perspective. The research will further develop effective soil fertility management to enhance nutritional quality. This will be done through a series of field and greenhouse studies combined with the cutting-edge isotope tracing technique, state of the art methodology in meta-analysis and human health assessment tools. The outcomes of this program will advance the knowledge of how soil fertility management affects nutrient bioavailability through interactions with environment and genotypes, and foster practices to improve cereal grain nutritional quality. The research will allow two Ph.D., two M.Sc. and five undergraduate students to receive interdisciplinary training in novel technical skills in soil fertility, plant nutrition and human health. The research findings will assist the Canadian grain industry in continuing world-class production standards under the changing climate.