How cutting water use for irrigation could reduce anaemia in India

A study shows India's food security has come at the cost of water security, and has failed to improve nutrition status

India could reduce the water it uses for irrigation by a third and simultaneously address its persistent malnutrition problem, if it replaced its rice crop with more nutritious and less thirsty cereals, a study of irrigation-water use over 43 years has found.
 
Of the cereals grown in India, rice consumes the most water per tonne of output while delivering the least nutrients—iron, zinc and protein—according to the study published in Science Advances, a global science journal. The suggested replacements for rice are maize, finger millet, pearl millet and sorghum, all of which consume less water per tonne and are