Addition of zinc in the soil can help prevent childhood stunting in developing countries like India where more than a third of children under five suffer from the chronic under-nutrition, a global study has said after analysing the health data from nearly 300,000 children and one million women across the States here
They also analysed over 27 million soil tests drawn from a nationwide soil health program and suggested that fortifying soil with minerals could be a beneficial health intervention. Childhood stunting is associated with poor brain development and long-lasting harmful consequences, such as reduced school performance and increased disease risks. The paper, published in Scientific Reports, is the first large-scale study to examine the association between children’s nutritional status or health outcomes and soil mineral availability in India.
“Our results add to a growing body of literature suggesting that interventions like micronutrient-enriched fertilizers may have a positive effect on health,” said study lead author Claire Morton from Stanford University. “This doesn’t prove that those interventions would be cost-effective for India, but it’s an exciting indication that they are worth testing.” The researchers found that the presence of zinc in soil helps prevent stunted childhood growth, and iron in soil helps keep hemoglobin – a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen – at healthy levels.
The link between soil zinc and childhood stunting is particularly robust — a one standard deviation increase in satisfactory soil zinc tests is associated with approximately 11 fewer children stunted per 1,000, according to the research. As a result, the researchers suggest that the potential benefits of using zinc-enriched fertilizers as health interventions deserves more consideration in India specifically and perhaps more generally.
Study senior author David Lobell, the Gloria and Richard Kushel Director of Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment and professor of Earth system science in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability said, “Even if this is only a small role, understanding it could help to identify better approaches to solving child stunting in India, which is one of the single biggest and longstanding challenges in global food security.”
According to India’s Comprehensible National Nutrition Survey 2016-18, nearly one-third of adolescents (10 to 19 years age group) were zinc deficient, leaving them highly vulnerable to stunting. The highest rates of stunting in India, for children under five, are in Bihar (127 million population) and Odisha (46.8 million population), at 48 percent and 34 percent respectively. Besides curbing childhood stunting, getting enough zinc in the diet is essential for proper growth and development, a well-functioning immune system, healthy tissues, and many other physiological requirements.
