Increased temperatures may safeguard the nutritional quality of crops under future elevated CO2 concentrations

Summary Iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn) deficiencies are a global human health problem that may worsen by growth of crops at elevated atmospheric CO 2 concentration (eCO 2 ). However, climate change will also involve higher temperature, but it is unclear how the combined effect of eCO 2 and higher temperature will affect the nutritional quality of food crops. To begin to address this question, we grew soybean ( Glycine max ) in a Temperature by Free-Air CO 2 Enrichment (T-FACE) experiment in 2014 and 2015 under ambient (400 μ mol mol −1 ) and elevated (600 μ mol mol −1 ) CO 2 concentration and under ambient and elevated temperatures (+2.7 °C day and +3.4 °C at night). In our study, eCO 2 significantly decreased Fe concentration in soybean seeds in both seasons (−8.7% and −7.7%) and Zn concentration in one season (−8.9%) while higher temperature (at ambient CO 2 concentration) had the opposite effect. The combination of eCO 2 with elevated temperature generally restored seed Fe and Zn concentrations to levels obtained under ambient CO 2 and temperature conditions, suggesting that the potential threat to human nutrition by increasing CO 2 concentration may not be realized. In general, seed Fe concentration was negatively correlated with yield suggesting inherent limitations to increasing seed Fe. In addition, we confirm our previous report that the concentration of seed storage products and several minerals varies with node position at which the seeds developed. Overall, these results demonstrate the complexity of predicting climate change effects on food security when various environmental parameters change in an interactive manner.