{"id":15614,"date":"2018-06-21T07:59:05","date_gmt":"2018-06-21T14:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/plantingseedsblog.cdfa.ca.gov\/wordpress\/?p=15614"},"modified":"2018-06-21T07:59:05","modified_gmt":"2018-06-21T14:59:05","slug":"as-carbon-dioxide-levels-rise-major-crops-are-losing-nutrients-from-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plantingseedsblog.cdfa.ca.gov\/wordpress\/index.php\/2018\/06\/21\/as-carbon-dioxide-levels-rise-major-crops-are-losing-nutrients-from-npr\/","title":{"rendered":"As carbon dioxide levels rise, major crops are losing nutrients – from NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rice is a crop that is losing important nutrients as carbon dioxide levels rise.<\/p><\/div>\n

By Merritt Kennedy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Plants need carbon dioxide to live, but its effects on them are complicated.<\/p>\n

As the level of carbon dioxide in the air continues to rise because of human activity, scientists are trying to pin down how the plants we eat are being affected.<\/p>\n

Mounting evidence suggests that many key plants lose nutritional value at higher CO2<\/sub>levels, and scientists are running experiments all over the world to try to tease out the effects.<\/p>\n

Rows of controlled chambers that look kind of like industrial refrigerators are testing how plants react to different levels of CO2<\/sub>\u00a0at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Adaptive Cropping Systems Laboratory outside of Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

On a recent afternoon,\u00a0Lewis Ziska<\/a>, who’s a plant physiologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, demonstrates an experiment there with a crop important to many of us \u2014 coffee.<\/p>\n

The chamber is really bright to mimic the sun. A few neat rows of green coffee plants are growing. The air that they’re absorbing has about the same amount of CO2<\/sub>\u00a0as in the preindustrial age, about 250 years ago.<\/p>\n