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Food Nitrogen Footprint of the Indian Subcontinent Toward 2050

Substantial loss of nitrogen (N) in reactive forms (nitrogen species except for N(2)) induced by agro–food system is a cause of the environmental degradation and harms human health. The main factors influencing the food N footprint of the Indian Subcontinent (ISC) are the nitrogen use efficiency (NU...

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Autores principales: Dhar, Aurup Ratan, Oita, Azusa, Matsubae, Kazuyo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9165528/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35669070
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.899431
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author Dhar, Aurup Ratan
Oita, Azusa
Matsubae, Kazuyo
author_facet Dhar, Aurup Ratan
Oita, Azusa
Matsubae, Kazuyo
author_sort Dhar, Aurup Ratan
collection PubMed
description Substantial loss of nitrogen (N) in reactive forms (nitrogen species except for N(2)) induced by agro–food system is a cause of the environmental degradation and harms human health. The main factors influencing the food N footprint of the Indian Subcontinent (ISC) are the nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) of crop cultivation and religious dietary cultures. In this study, we assess the food N footprint of the ISC and establish reduction scenarios toward 2050. We used a religion-sensitive N-Calculator method and food consumption data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to estimate the food N footprint of the ISC of different religious communities. We developed four reduction scenarios as follows: The business-as-usual scenario; a 30% increase in the crop cultivation NUE; altered protein supplies to the healthy EAT–Lancet reference diet considering religious food taboos; and an integrated approach with a 30% increase in the NUE increase and the altered diet. We used the long short-term memory recurrent neural network approach to predict the future. The study revealed that the average food N footprint per-capita per-year increased from 7.94 kg-N in the 1960s to 8.43 kg-N in the early 2010s, and the crop cultivation NUE was reduced to less than 40%. Buddhists had the lowest footprint over the period. An increase in the NUE of the crop cultivation and an altered diet results in a 13% reduction in the N footprint compared to the business-as-usual scenario. We conclude that improved crop cultivation NUEs and an altered religion-specific healthy diet would reduce the N footprint.
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spelling pubmed-91655282022-06-05 Food Nitrogen Footprint of the Indian Subcontinent Toward 2050 Dhar, Aurup Ratan Oita, Azusa Matsubae, Kazuyo Front Nutr Nutrition Substantial loss of nitrogen (N) in reactive forms (nitrogen species except for N(2)) induced by agro–food system is a cause of the environmental degradation and harms human health. The main factors influencing the food N footprint of the Indian Subcontinent (ISC) are the nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) of crop cultivation and religious dietary cultures. In this study, we assess the food N footprint of the ISC and establish reduction scenarios toward 2050. We used a religion-sensitive N-Calculator method and food consumption data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to estimate the food N footprint of the ISC of different religious communities. We developed four reduction scenarios as follows: The business-as-usual scenario; a 30% increase in the crop cultivation NUE; altered protein supplies to the healthy EAT–Lancet reference diet considering religious food taboos; and an integrated approach with a 30% increase in the NUE increase and the altered diet. We used the long short-term memory recurrent neural network approach to predict the future. The study revealed that the average food N footprint per-capita per-year increased from 7.94 kg-N in the 1960s to 8.43 kg-N in the early 2010s, and the crop cultivation NUE was reduced to less than 40%. Buddhists had the lowest footprint over the period. An increase in the NUE of the crop cultivation and an altered diet results in a 13% reduction in the N footprint compared to the business-as-usual scenario. We conclude that improved crop cultivation NUEs and an altered religion-specific healthy diet would reduce the N footprint. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-05-20 /pmc/articles/PMC9165528/ /pubmed/35669070 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.899431 Text en Copyright © 2022 Dhar, Oita and Matsubae. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Nutrition
Dhar, Aurup Ratan
Oita, Azusa
Matsubae, Kazuyo
Food Nitrogen Footprint of the Indian Subcontinent Toward 2050
title Food Nitrogen Footprint of the Indian Subcontinent Toward 2050
title_full Food Nitrogen Footprint of the Indian Subcontinent Toward 2050
title_fullStr Food Nitrogen Footprint of the Indian Subcontinent Toward 2050
title_full_unstemmed Food Nitrogen Footprint of the Indian Subcontinent Toward 2050
title_short Food Nitrogen Footprint of the Indian Subcontinent Toward 2050
title_sort food nitrogen footprint of the indian subcontinent toward 2050
topic Nutrition
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9165528/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35669070
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.899431
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