Rice, though may found in abundance now, was first grown at least 9400 years ago. In tracing its origin to a particular place, lies a point of contention among civilizations: some say Yangtse while some point to the Ganges.
And hence rice has become a staple crop in many countries including India, across continents for more than half of the world’s population, at least 20% of daily calorie needs be sourced from it.
Similarly, wheat was first found around 9600 BCE and has been cultivated on more land area than any other food crop across the world.
We intake cereal-based diet in hope of getting a good nutrition needed for proper growth. However, a new study has pointed out a very surprising as well as disturbing trend in nutritional content of staple foods.
According to the study, the rice cultivated today by humans does not have the same density of essential nutrients like zinc and iron, as those cultivated 50 years ago.
Consequently, there is a depleting trend noticed in the density of zinc and iron in rice and wheat cultivated in India. These findings were published in Environmental and Experimental Botany.
The seeds used for the study are: 16 varieties of rice from the gene bank maintained at the ICAR-National Rice Research Institute, Chinsurah Rice Research Station while 18 varieties of wheat have been used from ICAR-Indian Institute of Wheat and Barley Research.
The true plants v/s the modern plants:
‘The true type’ of a plant is available in nodal institutes of the country those preserve and archive the old cultivars or varieties from entire country. They have repositories of genetic materials in case one wants to study the genuine variety.
Since these cultivars are the ones never been tampered with or in original forms, the botanists call them the true ones.
The seeds taken from the gene banks have been germinated in the laboratory, sown in pots and kept in an ideal outdoor environment, provided with the necessary fertilizers and then finally, post-harvest seeds were studied for their nutrient content.
Findings after nutritional comparison:
For rice plant: zinc and iron concentrations in the 1960s were respectively 27.1 mg/kg and 59.8 mg/kg. This has come down to 20.6 mg/kg and 43.1 mg/kg, respectively in the 2000s.
For wheat plant: In 1960s, 33.3 mg/kg zinc and 57.6 mg/kg iron was found in cultivars, that dropped further to 23.5 mg/kg and 46.4 mg/kg, respectively during the 2010s.
Why this fall?
The main author of the study explains: “There could be several possible reasons for such depletion: one is a ‘dilution effect’ that is caused by decreased nutrient concentration in response to higher grain yield.”
“This means the rate of yield increase is not compensated by the rate of nutrient take-up by the plants. Also, the soils supporting plants could be low in plant-available nutrients.”
“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.”
“Though the Indian government has taken initiatives such as providing supplementation pills to school children, it is not enough. We need to concentrate on other options like biofortification, where we breed food crops that are rich in micronutrients.”
Now there is a doubt, if the new plants have degraded quality of nutrients, why not try and cultivate the older cultivars again?
The paper explains: “growing newer-released (1990s and later) cultivars of rice and wheat cannot be a sustainable option to alleviate zinc and iron malnutrition in Indian population. These negative effects need to be circumvented by improving the grain ionome (that is, nutritional make-up)…while releasing cultivars in future breeding programmes”.
Foreseen implications in India:
With an increased food security since the Green revolution but decreased nutritional content in foods in India, by 2050, approximately 502 million women and children will be prone to having anemia and other diseases associated with iron deficiency.
According to a study published in 2018 in journal Nature by Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, India will unfortunately bear the greatest burden of having 50 million zinc deficient people in the world.
Globally 2 billion people lie at risk of zinc deficiency, accounting for 2.9% of global disease burden and nearly affecting about one-third of the world’s population.
Since the iron and zinc deficiencies have been found to coexist in high-risk population, there is an urgent and crucial need to scrutinize the predictors of these morbidities and evaluate their status. For this, we wait for NHFS5 (National Health Family Survey) to ascertain a few things in data.
Rice Fortification: beginning of a solution
Fortification refers to increasing the content of any essential micronutrient, i.e. vitamins and minerals in a food to improve the nutritional quality of the food supply and provide a public health benefit with minimal risk to health, according to WHO.
Rice can be fortified by crushing first into a powder, adding a micronutrient powder to it and then reinforcing into the grains or by simply spraying the surface of ordinary rice grains with a vitamin and mineral mix to form protective coatings in several layers.
Rice can also be extruded and shaped into partially precooked grain-like structures resembling rice grains, which can then be blended with natural polished rice. Rice kernels can be fortified with several micronutrients, such as iron, folic acid and other B-complex vitamins, vitamin A and zinc.
According to NHFS-4, India is home to about 60 percent of anaemic preschool children, 50 percent of anaemic pregnant women, and a quarter of anaemic men.
Therefore, rice fortification standards were operationalized in 2016 and gazetted in 2018. Many States are exploring rice fortification in their PDS (Public Distribution System) to strengthen public health under National Nutrition Mission (Poshan Abhiyan) and “Anemia Mukt Bharat” (Anemia Free India) initiative under it.
Is it effective and which countries undertake it?
Rice fortification is very cost-effective, the additional cost varying approximately between INR 0.3 – 0.4 per kg depending on all associated factors as well as the nutrients added. It is anyhow negligible to the cost of out-of-pocket expenditure on diseases.
Five countries have mandated rice in their country to be fortified by law, namely, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines. Costa Rica has implemented the most successful rice fortification programme till date.
Additionally, rice is also fortified voluntarily in Brazil, Dominican Republic, Colombia, South Africa and the United States of America.