Research articles

Environmental impacts of water use affect the sustainability of food production. The impacts of water use associated with self-selected diets in the United States are estimated here based on the types and quantities of foods in the diet, the irrigation water required to produce those foods and the relative scarcity of water in the regions where that irrigation occurs. Food substitutions offer opportunities to reduce these water impacts.

Substitution of food produce from declining wild fisheries with farmed species may exacerbate prevalent micronutrient deficiencies in regions such as the urban Peruvian Amazon, as well as negatively impact agricultural land use and greenhouse gas emissions.

Crop exposure to sunlight may be affected by air pollution, climate change and geoengineering. Empirical estimates of the effects of atmospheric opacity on sunlight reveal important changes in maize and soy yields in the United States, Europe, Brazil and China.

Molecular interactions between polyphenol targets and proteins associated with disease are explored through a network medicine framework. The network proximity of polyphenol protein targets to disease proteins can predict therapeutic effects, highlighting more broadly the potential of network medicine as a tool for nutritional sciences.

This study draws on publicly available data to examine food-system inequality across countries. Changes in natural resource inputs, food/nutrient outputs and nutrition/health indicators reveal that inequality generally declined, but did so very differently across variables.

Conservative to disruptive changes in dietary patterns of French adults from the NutriNet-Santé cohort are considered for reducing environmental impacts, increasing organic food consumption, providing adequate nutrition and being economically acceptable. A progressive substitution of animal products by plant products across dietary scenarios more closely aligned dimensions of sustainability.

Using spatial statistics and scenario analysis, Wang et al. identify the rural land most suitable for crop production in more than 2,800 Chinese counties. They estimate that a targeted increase in China’s urbanization level could release almost 6 million hectares of rural land for agriculture.

Data on GHG emissions from the food system are mostly scattered across sectors and remain unavailable in many countries. EDGAR-FOOD, a globally consistent food emission database, brings together emissions from food-related land use and land-use change, production, processing, distribution, consumption and residues over 1990–2015 at country level.

Food systems rely on plastics, but a top-level understanding of their effects on environmental, food security and human health remains poorly explored. The systematic scoping review presented here describes the research landscape from 2000 onwards, finding many publications on agricultural production, but gaps in our knowledge on low-income regions and outcomes for human health.

Demand for animal products in East Africa is projected to rise, but climate change-induced temperature increases will negatively impact livestock production. This modelling study quantifies the potential frequency and length of dangerous heat-stress events for the six main livestock types, identifies the regions that will be most affected and highlights the types of livestock that will be most at risk.

Fast and simultaneous identification of multiple viable pathogens on food is critical to public health. By integrating paper chromogenic arrays (PCAs) and machine learning, a system was developed to automatically recognize PCA patterns on multiplexed viable pathogens with strain-level specificity.

In South Africa, GM white maize has been grown for direct human consumption, whereas GM yellow and conventional hybrid maize have been cultivated primarily for livestock feed. Across 106 locations, 28 years, 491 cultivars, and 49,335 dryland and 9,617 irrigated observations in South Africa, GM maize showed increased mean yields over conventional hybrid maize, and GM white maize showed higher increased yields than GM yellow maize.

Assessing the effects of cover crops on soil health under real-world conditions requires a comprehensive dataset. A farmer-led trial on 1,522 strip-years from 78 farms across 9 US states over 5 years reveals improvements in key soil indicators, with active carbon concentration responding the most rapidly.

Starch bioaccessibility is limited by an intact cell wall. Type 1 and type 2 cell walls, exemplified by chickpea and durum wheat, confer variable dimensions of cell integrity, digestion kinetics and starch bioaccessibility to unprocessed and processed foods. Tissue fracture properties and cell wall permeability emerge here as mechanisms by which dietary fibre affects starch bioaccessibility.

COVID-19 and locust swarms have threatened international agricultural supply chains. Here, the possible impacts on wheat, rice and maize trade are modelled, showing that trade restrictions could create food price spikes and localized food shortages.

Large-scale land transactions can promote agricultural intensification but may be accompanied by negative socioeconomic and environmental consequences. Estimated carbon emissions from converting transacted lands to large-scale farms can reach up to 2.26 Gt, with the majority emitting from Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Oceania; mitigation strategies are discussed.

Sudan faces population growth to 80 million people, rising temperatures and trebling in demand for wheat by 2050. Crop modelling under climate and socioeconomic scenarios indicates the regional rates of yield growth that must be achieved by breeding heat-tolerant varieties to adapt wheat production to climate change and increased demand.

System-level analysis on the effects of soil biodiversity on cropping system is lacking. Across conventionally managed European fields, the proportion of time with crop cover during the past ten-year rotation has a greater impact than crop diversity on soil microbial diversity, soil multifunctionality and crop yield.