Journal article
Relationship between yield and mineral nutrient concentrations in historical and modern spring wheat cultivars
Euphytica, Vol.163(3), pp.381-390
10/2008
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/108657
Abstract
The diet of approximately three billion people worldwide is nutrient deficient and most of the world’s poorest people are dependent on staple food crops as their primary source of micronutrients. One component of the solution to nutrient deficiencies is collaboration among plant breeders, cereal chemists and nutritionists to produce staple crop cultivars with increased mineral nutrient concentration. Sixty-three historical and modern wheat cultivars were evaluated for grain yield and concentration of calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, selenium, and zinc. While grain yield has increased over time, the concentrations of all minerals except calcium have decreased. Thus a greater consumption of whole wheat bread from modern cultivars is required to achieve the same percentage of recommended dietary allowance levels contributed by most of the older cultivars. The decrease in mineral concentration over the past 120 years occurs primarily in the soft white wheat market class, whereas in the hard red market class it has remained largely constant over time. This suggests that plant breeders, through intentional selection of low ash content in soft white wheat cultivars, have contributed to the decreased mineral nutrient concentration in modern wheat cultivars. These results contradict the theory that there exists a genetically based, biological trade-off between yield and mineral concentrations. Therefore, using the abundant variation present in wheat cultivars, it should be possible to improve mineral concentrations in modern cultivars without negatively affecting yield.
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Details
- Title
- Relationship between yield and mineral nutrient concentrations in historical and modern spring wheat cultivars
- Creators
- Kevin Murphy - Department of Crop and Soil Sciences Washington State University 387 Johnson Hall Pullman WA 99164-6420 USAPhilip Reeves - USDA-ARS Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Centre 2420 Second Avenue North Grand Forks ND 5820 USAStephen Jones - Department of Crop and Soil Sciences Washington State University 387 Johnson Hall Pullman WA 99164-6420 USA
- Contributors
- Edith T Lammerts van Bueren (Editor)Hanne Østergård (Editor)Isabelle Goldringer (Editor)Olga Scholten (Editor)
- Publication Details
- Euphytica, Vol.163(3), pp.381-390
- Academic Unit
- Crop and Soil Sciences, Department of
- Publisher
- Springer Netherlands; Dordrecht
- Identifiers
- 99900546923601842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article