AgriScience

Hidden Hunger

EO4Nutri will develop innovative scientific solutions that bring together the capabilities of various Earth Observation (EO) data through novel methods and approaches to estimate and predict the nutrient content of soil, crop canopy, and harvested crops for several global staple grains: maize, rice, sorghum, teff and wheat. This will advance our knowledge in better understanding, mapping, and monitoring nutritional quality of crops. In terms of the investigated nutrients, we will focus on those with high relevance to human nutrition and plant growth: Calcium (Ca), Iron (Fe), Magnesium (Mg), Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), Potassium (K), Selenium (Se), Sulphur (S), and Zinc (Zn). These nutrients are deficient in many countries across the globe. Zn deficiency, for example, is the most ubiquitous micronutrient deficiency in crops worldwide (Alloway 2009) and was the best predicted in HyNutri. It is estimated that about 17% of the world population suffers from Zn deficiency (Kumssa et al. 2015). Fe was also well-predicted in HyNutri. Twenty-five percent of the global population is Fe deficient (Radlowski and Johnson 2013). Se was not assessed in HyNutri, but it is also deficient in many crops around the world (Alloway 2008). For example, the Italian Institute of Research on Agriculture and Nutrition (INRAN) reported that the rice produced in Italy is characterized by a low content of Se (Spadoni et al. 2007).