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Mapping micronutrients in grain and soil unearths hidden hunger in Africa

A diet containing insufficient micronutrients can harm human health. Maps that pinpoint areas of Africa associated with micronutrient-poor grains now offer a way to target interventions that tackle such deficiencies.
  1. Ken E. Giller

    1. Ken E. Giller is in the Department of Plant Sciences, Wageningen University & Research, 6700AK Wageningen, the Netherlands.

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  2. Shamie Zingore

    1. Shamie Zingore is at the African Plant Nutrition Institute, Benguèrir 41350, Morocco.

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Access to sufficient safe, nutritious food for a healthy diet is a basic human right, and eradicating hunger lies at the heart of the global sustainability agenda. As we move towards the United Nations Food Systems Summit later this year, it is imperative that the debate about global food security shifts from a narrow focus on providing enough calories to consideration of how to provide the right balance of foods needed. A challenge related to this, and one not often placed in the limelight, is the issue of ‘hidden hunger’, the deficiency of specific micronutrients (minerals and vitamins), which is prevalent in many countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Writing in Nature, Gashu et al.1 present maps of Ethiopia and Malawi that highlight hotspots at greatest risk of human micronutrient deficiency associated with local cereal intake. This information, obtained by measuring the mineral content of cereal grains and the soils in which they were grown, enlarges the range of options available when selecting interventions to enhance human health.

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Nature 594, 31-32 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01268-5

References

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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