News & Views in 2020

Effects of national policies on crop yield and nitrogen losses can be disentangled from environmental conditions using spatial discontinuities between international borders.

Climate change increases the frequency and severity of drought in many agricultural regions. A novel big-data approach has been designed to shed light on the interactions between agronomic and environmental factors affecting the sensitivity of crop yields to drought.

An assessment of the climate vulnerability of the UK’s fruit and vegetable supply is a useful starting point for considering the health, environment, and social trade-offs of international trade in food.

A series of in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo studies show that starch structure and plant tissue intactness control glucose release from pea-based foods. Modification of these characteristics through plant breeding and food processing may provide opportunities for enhanced food formulation, but challenges for labelling and communication.

Feeding infants with formula requires heating water and bottles for sterilization and formula preparation. Plastic infant feeding bottles are commonly used, and now their potential to release microplastics has been explored at a global scale.

Farm management strategies for alternatives to nitrogen application can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality, and increase crop yields in China.

The diversity of aquaculture production systems in Bangladesh may be calibrated to provide food and nutrition security without negative environmental impact, aligning multiple interests of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

India’s domestic food production is capable of supplying adequate micronutrients to its growing population in spite of water and land constraints, but achieving this will require a shift away from the current focus on rice and wheat and towards vegetables, fruit and lentils.

For the food system of China and its individual provinces to stay within downscaled planetary boundaries, sustainability strategies must combine demand, production, and redistribution interventions to meet targets for greenhouse gas emissions, water use, land use, and nutrient inputs.

Big data from major online food ordering platforms can facilitate a richer understanding of the environmental impact of current food delivery packaging waste, and scenarios for more sustainable alternatives.

Genomic technologies offer opportunities to monitor microbial strains and their metabolic features to reconstruct the history of cheese.

Barley grain can have high concentrations of the heavy metal cadmium. Identification of a gene controlling cadmium accumulation in barley offers a path to averting unsafe consumption by humans.

One-third of human-induced reactive nitrogen emissions can be traced to livestock supply chains. Highly variable nitrogen use efficiencies along these chains uncover opportunities for more sustainable nitrogen management.

Metabolomics can identify dietary biomarkers and describe the metabolic consequences of diet. A robust study design identifies a set of stable urinary metabolites that link to healthy and unhealthy dietary patterns, metabolic networks and distinct urinary metabolic signatures.

In the short term, conservation agriculture does not overcome problems of poor crop productivity and food insecurity of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

A diet-controlled study indicates that metabolic flexibility is an important driver of inter-individual difference in the response to dietary change, and a high flexibility score is a likely health asset.

Under the current political and regulatory environment, animal-sourced foods will remain part of the least-cost nutritious diet in the United States.

A new approach to analysing resilience reveals changes in China’s phosphorus system and suggests ways to improve it.

Food banks, food pantries and other emergency food operations are often overlooked in studies of food access. Their availability for patrons should not be expressed in terms of geographic coverage, but rather their capacity and hours of operation.

The global trade of fish and fish products brings with it the challenge of identifying exposure to contaminants from imported products. Marine fish trade models can now quantify human exposure to persistent organic pollutants.