NPR

As Carbon Dioxide Levels Rise, Major Crops Are Losing Nutrients

As the level of carbon dioxide in the air rises because of climate change, scientists are trying to pin down how plants are impacted. There's evidence that it's changing many important plants we eat.
Rice within the octagon in this field is part of an experiment to grow rice under different levels of carbon dioxide.

Plants need carbon dioxide to live. But its effects on them are complicated.

As the level of carbon dioxide in the air continues to rise because of climate change, scientists are trying to pin down how the plants we eat are being impacted.

Mounting evidence suggests that many key plants lose nutritional value at higher CO2 levels, and scientists are running experiments all over the world to try to tease out the effects.

Rows of controlled chambers that look kind of like industrial refrigerators are testing how plants react to different levels of CO at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Adaptive Cropping Systems Laboratory outside of Washington, D.C.

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