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Solutions to India's growing malnutrition issue? Replace rice with cereals

Replacing rice with a more nutrient-rich or water-efficient crop would marginally improve the production of protein (1%) but considerably increase the production of iron and zinc, by 27% and 13%

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Charu Bahri | India Spend

Last Updated : Jul 07 2018 | 2:40 PM IST

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

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