Are your staple rice and wheat losing their nutrients?

Are your staple rice and wheat losing their nutrients?

Subject : Science & tech

Context : Researchers from various institutes under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Bidhan Chandra KrishiViswavidyalaya found depleting trends in grain density of zinc and iron in rice and wheat cultivated in India.

Concept :

• The team collected seeds of rice (16 varieties) and wheat (18 varieties) from the gene bank maintained at the ICAR-National Rice Research Institute, Chinsurah Rice Research Station and ICAR-Indian Institute of Wheat and Barley Research.
• Cultivar repositories are nodal institutes that preserve and archive the old cultivars or varieties from our country. These institutes are repositories of genetic materials.
• The team noted that zinc and iron concentrations in grains of rice cultivars released in the 1960s were 27.1 mg/kg and 59.8 mg/kg. This depleted to 20.6 mg/kg and 43.1 mg/kg, respectively in the 2000s.
• In wheat, the concentrations of zinc and iron — 33.3 mg/kg and 57.6 mg/kg in cultivars of the 1960s, dropped to 23.5 mg/kg and 46.4 mg/kg, respectively in cultivars released during the 2010s.
• Zinc and iron deficiency affects billions of people globally and the countries with this deficiency have diets composed mainly of rice, wheat, corn, and barley.

Micronutrients

• Micronutrients are nutrients that are required by the body in lesser amounts for its growth and development. They play a major role in the metabolic activities of the body. These include vitamins and minerals.
• Since our body cannot produce vitamins and minerals, they are taken externally from different food products.
• The micronutrient content for every food is different; therefore, it is advisable to eat varieties of food for enough vitamin and mineral consumption.
• These micronutrients help in preventing and fighting certain diseases. However, they should be taken in adequate quantities: excess intake or inadequate intake results in several disorders such as visual impairment, mental retardation, etc.

About ICAR

• The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) was established on 16 July 1929 as a registered society under the Societies Registration Act, 1860.
• It is an autonomous organisation under the Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India.
• It is headquartered at New Delhi. With 102 ICAR institutes and 71 agricultural universities spread across the country this is one of the largest national agricultural systems in the world.
• It is the apex body for coordinating, guiding and managing research and education in agriculture including horticulture, fisheries and animal sciences in the entire country.