Not so super food Our vegetables are losing nutrients. Can biofortification help?

In 2004, Donald Davis and fellow scientists at the University of Texas made an alarming discovery: 43 foods, mostly vegetables, showed a marked decrease in nutrients between the mid and late 20th century.

- Miranda Lipton

According to that research, the calcium in green beans dropped from 65 to 37mg. Vitamin A levels plummeted by almost half in asparagus. Broccoli stalks had less iron.

Nutrient loss has continued since that study. More recent research has documented the declining nutrient value in some staple crops due to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels; a 2018 study that tested rice found that higher CO2 levels reduced its protein, iron and zinc content.

The climate crisis has only accelerated concerns about crops’ nutritional value. That’s prompted the emergence of a process called biofortification, a strategy to replenish lost nutrients or those that foods never had in the first place.

Biofortification encompasses multiple technologies. One involves genetically modifying a crop to increase its nutritional contents, which allows for the rapid introduction of new traits. Another, agronomic biofortification, utilizes nutrient-rich fertilizers or soil amendments to concentrate particular minerals in plants. Lastly, selective plant breeding can produce new varieties, though it can take a decade or more to yield a single variety.

Biofortification is an alternative to fortification, which has been part of the US industrial food system since the 1920s, when the nation began boosting table salt with iodine to reduce conditions related to mineral deficiency, such as goiter. Biofortification puts nutrients directly into the seed, as opposed to fortification, which adds nutrients into food once it’s grown. On the global stage, international stakeholders such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) have deemed the development of nutrient-enhanced biofortified crops as one of their leading goals in achieving food security.