 And this first topic in this webinar series this year will be on biofortification in a broader sense, but we also want to focus perhaps a bit more this time on what is called agronomic biofortification. Yes, I can hear you. Yes, yeah. Agronomic biofortification so particularly the use also fertilizers to improve the human nutrition through providing targeted micronutrients to the crop. So we'll hear more about this later this afternoon a few housekeeping words very quickly at the beginning. This will be recorded and the recordings as well as the PDFs of the presentations will be made available to you afterwards. We have the opportunity for you to submit any questions as we go on with the presentations. Please submit questions through the Q&A button down at the bottom of zoom not the chat function. The speakers may already answer some of the questions live in writing, but we hope you also have a substantial amount of time then for discussion at the end. After we've run through all of the presentations to come back to the questions that have been posed. Without further ado, delay, I'd like to get started with some opening remarks which will be given by Mr. Jingyuan Jia, the director of the plant production and production division of FAO. Please, Mr. Jia, the floor is yours. Okay. Thank you very much. And Archie, the facilitator and dear participants and colleagues. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, good morning, and good evening. I would like to ask our police to welcome all of you to this plant nutrition webinar series, which is co-organized by FAO, technical network, unsustainable crop production, and the international fertilizer association, AFAM. And today's webinar are the increase awareness of the importance of agronomic biofortification to overcome heightened anger and to enhance dialogue and stakeholders involvement to a sustainable use of fertilizer to the surplus diversity of mineral element content in the major crop. Also, you know that last year or 2021, the FAO and AFAM renewed all MOU outlining our way for strengthening the existing collaboration in the area of sustainable food and agricultural soil health and fertilizer statistic. Through this important partnership, FAO and the EFA will collaborate to submit awareness about international code of conduct for the sustainable use and the management of fertilizers and the fertilizer we can see. As well as development, as well as benefit and the disseminate fertilizer statistic to increase food security and the safety and the efficient use of fertilizers. The importance of a partnership between the AO and the EFA has increased after current crisis, particularly the war of Ocarim. Therefore, we initiate a discussion for sharing knowledge and theories to update the key stakeholders about the change and the impact of a carbon situation in the fertilizer market. And also we are going to introduce or facilitate some discussion how to increase the fertilizer efficiency to deal with current situation. Dear colleague, the year 2020 is the first year 2022 is the first year for FAO to implement his strategic framework. 2021 to 2021, this 10-year plan. The core business of this framework for FAO is to support transition to agro-food system to be more efficient, inclusive, resilient, sustainable for better production, better nutrition, better environment and a better life. Leave no one behind. Everybody knows that the better production is number one, it's fundamental for others to be better. So in accordance with that, the current today's webinar, increase the awareness of better nutrition and better production to provide a better life in a better environment. So I can say this webinar is very, very important and also very much in time. NSP, Production Protection Division and NSP support. FAO, strategic framework, is the main needs role, we're going to be one, better production project number one, is a better production. This means to support innovation for sustainable agriculture production. Here the core business is to develop and the crop system is a more green crop system and then to better production and the soon and optimization and the minimization. What is optimization? Optimization means to optimize all the positive perspective for the crop system to make a better production. And also minimize all the negative impact and the effect and effect in the crop system. So to minimize all the negative impact to also gain better production. So now the key approach to implement FAO and priority program BP1 is the OCOP. So let's say initiative, what is OCOP? OCOP is FAO global action on green development of special agriculture products. And this means now we do one country, one priority program is OCOP. This will be very important tool for FAO to support better production. We call it value, edit, impact, initiative. OCOP will be very good role also for globalization and then for different special crop. This is not only for productivity, but also for nutrition. So in this case, I'm sure about 45 committee called the president example how BP1 and OCOP can add value to promote production, consumption, a sustainable production, sustainable consumption and a sustainable meeting of less special agriculture products. And therefore can rebuild into achieve FAO strategic framework and of course, lastly, can build into achieve SDGs. So today's webinar, I'm sure there will be a very enriched presentation and discussion how this bio-fortification to support better production, better nutrition, and get better environment and better life. So I'm looking forward to learn more how can we optimize positive aspect of crop production system and plant nutrition through agronomy, bio-fortification, and minimize micronutrient malnutrition in stable crop. In particular, the strategy portrays deficiency in air, vitamins, vitamin A, and zinc, etc. I wish you all a very fruitful and enjoyable webinar. Say oh, over to you facilitator. Thank you, Mrs here. So it is estimated that worldwide about 2 billion people suffer from different forms of micronutrient deficiencies, often also multiple forms. And many of them also are related to mineral elements that we consume through food and through also in particular plants are grown to be eaten in one way or another by humans. So this is the focus of today's seminar, and I'm very happy to have as a first speaker, Patricia Kofrakasi. She is a senior nutrition and food systems officer in the Food and Nutrition Division of FAO, and she will give us a brief overview of the bio-fortification work that FAO does. Over to you, Patricia. Thank you so much, Kim, and good morning and good afternoon. I will now share my screen. I'm very pleased to be here to discuss the role of bio-fortification of common staple foods in addressing micronutrient deficiencies, also known as hidden hunger. Bio-fortification is one of the essential elements to tackle hunger as it allows food system to deliver more nutritious diets to vulnerable population without requiring significant changes in consumer behavior with the potential to sustainably improve health outcomes, especially in low and middle income countries. Why is bio-fortification needed? 128 countries with comparable data on reports anemia as a problem of public health significance. Anemia is in large part attributed to the deficiency of iron and is estimated to contribute to 20% of maternal death. In addition to the hidden hunger, we know that 3 billion people around the world cannot afford a healthy diet, which means a diet that is rich in variety of foods. The efficacy of bio-fortification in reducing micronutrient deficiency has been demonstrated through several studies. Including iron bio-fortified beans and pearl millet, vitamin A bio-fortified cassava, maize and sweet potatoes. And the studies have demonstrated the impact of consumption of these crops on functional cognitive and health and productivity outcomes. So before we were mentioning vitamin A bio-fortified crops and their importance to reduce vitamin A deficiency. Iron fortified crops to reverse iron deficiency and also zinc bio-fortified crops and the importance to reduce the susceptibility and duration of various illnesses. So, but there are many gaps in the planning and implementation of bio-fortification strategies. And one gap is the overall lack of usable data. So limited data on coverage and also on the dietary contribution. When we talk about the nutritional adequacy of a diet, we are interested about individuals. And that is because we know that there is a direct link between food consumption and nutritional adequacy. And this is more direct in the case of individual consumption data. Therefore, FAO and WHO are collaborating to build a global individual food consumption data tool to better understand what people eat. And this is going to be really important when planning this kind of strategies. Another gap is the lack of standards and limited regulation. And the role of the government is fundamental to ensure that new varieties of core staple crops have mandatory minimum level of nutrient content. That there are standards for micronutrient content of bio-fortified foods and also to ensure the quality of seeds and inputs to farmers. So the standards are important to achieve impact. And there are also gaps in the inclusion of bio-fortification in policies and legislations. But there are also very positive examples from a variety of countries. For example, Indonesia has included Heizing Rice in social safety net program. Guatemala has included bio-fortified crops as part of its COVID-19 economic recovery plan. And the African Union has adopted a roadmap to guide the 55 member states. So these are all important examples of supportive policies. And it's also important to address gap in terms of the quality of implementation if you want to really scale up this type of strategy. And here there is a role to play by multiple stakeholders, not only the government but the private sector and also development partner. So it's important to have a variety of strategies, so supporting farmers with verified inputs and good agricultural practice, enhance traceability and market confidence, support the market for bio-fortified crops and support also market monitoring efforts, and also increase consumers awareness and hear the importance of food labelling to increase the visibility of bio-fortified crops. And there are also innovation in terms of developing affordable healthy food products with bio-fortified ingredients. And in terms of the fifth gap which is limited integration in public programs, we really look here at the role of government but also the support from development partners in ensuring that this type of strategy really includes the most vulnerable. And one could be through the integration of bio-fortified products in public support programs such as food assistance and school meals. And the other one is really to ensure the inclusion of bio-fortified varieties in farmer focused subsidy programs. And I would like to conclude just with the letter of agreement that we have signed with Harvest Plus to support the scaling up of bio-fortification. And we have established a voluntary expert advisory group to support the development and validation of an implementation guidance. These implementation guidance will benefit from a number of case studies, building on existing practices and lessons learned. And we will add to this guidance note a framework to guide the economic evaluation, because that's really important when it comes to inform the planning and financing of bio-fortification. And I would like to conclude now with thanking you very much for this opportunity and reminding always that collaboration scheme. Thank you so much. Thank you, Patricia. And just to remind everybody if you have questions related to Patricia's presentation, please enter them in the Q&A box or bottom at the bottom of the Zoom screen. Patricia has already alluded to some of the policy related issues when it comes to upscaling innovations like bio-fortified crops. And we will now move a bit more into the agronomic space and fertilizer space, because that's also of course an opportunity for the fertilizer industry to contribute more directly to improving nutrition. And I'm very happy to have with us today Professor Ismail Chakmak, who is the Professor of Plant Nutrition from Sabancı University in Istanbul in Turkey. And I dare say has been for a long time working on the hidden hunger problem from a plant nutrition point of view has been involved in many initiatives. I would say the world authority for this topic and he'll give you now an excellent overview of the problem and also some examples of the work that he's been involved with over to you Ismail. Please unmute yourself. So now the full screen, yes Akim. Yep. So Akim, thank you very much. I am pleased to be here today with the IFA and FAO and also the participants of this event. So my talk is going to focus on the role of agronomic bio-fortification in enrichment of the food crops with micronutrients to address the hidden hunger problem in human populations. I have to say that hidden hunger is all but still persistent nutritional problem. It has been already mentioned, or two billion people suffer from mineral micronutrient deficiencies, such as saying iron selenium and iodine deficiency, which are responsible for number of health complications, such as impairments in the system, physical development and brain function. I think most of you know very well that micronutrients have very critical antiviral, antibacterial effects, impacts in our human system. Did you know that first international commitment, first international statement to ending the hunger problem was made in 1943. Number of similar global statement declaration have been made. Number of conferences have been organized. And you see almost 80 years are over. And still today we have in our planet 800 million people suffering from regular hunger problem and over two billion people also existing which who are suffering from mineral micronutrient deficiencies. I think this is really very shameful situation for us. And the relevance and importance of micronutrient deficiencies in human population is also studied scientifically, at least since early 60 years. And I'm trying to say that the problem is very well known problem and documented problem or problem but still persons of problem. And he didn't have it is also represent an important economic burden for number of countries. And the publication which indicate that economic impact of micronutrient deficiencies, I mean the hidden hunger problems equivalent up to 5% of the GDP in number of developing countries, particularly in sub Saharan Africa. So the question is, hey, what is the reason, what about the main cause or reason of the hidden hunger. This is here three factors which are relevant to my talk today. So number one is related to amount of the fight to available micronutrients in cultivated soils. As you know, the, the, the, the label they cultivated so it's content very low amount of plant available micronutrients for root update. And the reason is related to the micronutrient depletion problem in cultivated soils. You know the crops to remove every year significant amount of the micronutrients from the soil. For example, mace growing per hectare, remove every year almost 500 gram core. And how many farmers replenish the soils with micronutrients today, therefore after some time the soils are depicted with micronutrients. And the third point is also very relevant. And the crop production and partner system today also in the past, not designed with the aim to improve human nutrition and human health. You know the main motivation today in crop production is just to increase the year to maximize the year. You know, if you have if you increase the year, you cause division problem. You see here one slides, which showed the changes in wheat grain yield and grains in concentration in wheat growing in Rotemset since 1845 and that is very clear to see that increase in grain yield particularly after the Green Revolution. We have a clear decline in grain concentration of the micronutrients. And other reports show same effect and you see here historical changes in grain protein iron and zinc concentration. All the time there's a very clear decline in concentration of protein and micronutrients in cultivated cereal crops. We have two deep problems actually here with micronutrients. One is a division in soil by cropping the other one is a dilution of micronutrients in grain by increasingly grain yield. So he didn't hunger in my first slice I highlighted I need to say again he didn't have the problem still persistent problem, despite the number of national and international project completed conducted in the past 50 years. Despite of in number of international aid programs realize and conducted in different countries, and also the diverse of education and training programs have realized, but still the magnitude of the problems are high and very relevant. And what I am trying to say, it will cause when food policies implemented so far have simply not succeeded to address the hidden hunger problem of sustainability, despite using larger amount of the resources and funds. Of course, there was some progress and success, but the methods use better not sustainable therefore the problem is still persistent problem. So I should I have to say none of the costs and food policies applied so far have included fertilizer based solution, such as application of micronutrient content fertilizer. In fact, in the past and it's still today fertilizer programs are being used and considered in such in countries but those of fertilizer programs focus rather to to to improve fertility to years on profit of the farmers. However, little or no priority has been given to nutritional outcomes relevant to to be denied. So again, if the micronutrients are low in the source in the cultivated source, if the microns are low in a digital part of the food crop, how the different agricultural food policies nearly successful in addressing hidden and the problem in a sustainable way. Today, I will show you a few case studies plant nutrition based strategies which which demonstrate that that fertilizer strategy really very effective in increasing micronutrient concentration of the food crops to meet human needs for for micronutrients. First, I will talk to start with the case study conducted in Finland. I think you know, in Finland, because of very low dietary selenium intake in Finland the government has made a decision to enrich the old NPQ fertilizer with selenium earlier 80 years. See what happens. So before enrichment of the fertilizer selenium that was the early 80 years, the grain selenium concentration was around below 50 microgram per kilogram after enrichment of the fertilizer selenium you see you see here, very significant very nice increase in grain selenium concentration. Similar changes have been also found in serum or in plasma selenium concentration or in silage concentration of selenium or meat or other foods. So there was a very nice response of the different foods to selenium to use to application of selenium enriched NPQ fertilizer. The amount of the fertilizer I mean selenium to the to the soil is really very low as you see here is around five gram per hectare of selenium is needed to include sufficiently brain selenium concentration. We have a similar situation story in Turkey. So you know, earlier 90 years in, we have seen the often some poor growth, some symptoms on serious on weed growing in Anatolia, we didn't know the reason initially but later on we recognize the problems related to zinc deficiency. And then we start a number of field experiments in Anatolia, early 90 years and we received a good fund, there's financial support from NATO from NATO science for stability division. And the results show impressive increases in plant growth in yield of the plant after application of zinc fertilizer. You see here what happens, early 90 years, there was no zinc containing fertilizer produced and applied in Turkey. But after this NATO support the zinc project you see here what happens, the fertilizer industry responded very quickly started to produce zinc containing fertilizer and now we produce and apply around 600,000 zinc containing NPK fertilizer in Turkey. Of course, with the application of this fertilizer, we improve not only the yield, the growth of the series, but at the same time, we increase the nutritional value, nutritional quality of the grain that we harvest in terms of at least the grains in. So you see here in most of the fields treated with zinc fertilizer, we have found at least 50 up to 100% increases in grains in concentration. We made several tests to understand which metals are epidemic metals application method is effective to increase the grains in and we have found that that leaf for the order application of zinc fertilizer were more effective than the seed and soil application. So as you see here, the soil application is still very effective in increasing the grains in concentration seed application I mean the coating the seed with zinc is not a good way to increase the grain saying maybe it's a good way to if it's a seed figure seedling figure, but seed coating of zinc has no effect on the concentration, but before the first position has huge impact on the grain saying concentration of the series. Now I am moving to harvesting project that has been established under our first class program. It started 2008 and they're finished very recently to in 2022 and this program has been conducted in almost in 15 countries under different political conditions by using different cultures, and I have to say this for your fertilization of saying doesn't matter in which country you are doesn't matter in which region you are works very well. Now I will show you here some slides and some results from this project and China, India, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Turkey and Zambia that you see the average grains in concentration concentration without zinc application is 27 micro milligram per kilogram. So in this application of zinc, you can almost double the grains in concentration, irrespective of the countries of region I mean the effect is very clear to see in those different regions. And is it also possible to develop to prepare cocktail of micronutrient solution, you can make a solution content zinc iodine selenium and iron and spray to the plants, one or two times. So here in China, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Mexico, and you see by applying this mix of micronutrients cocktail of micronutrients you can double almost zinc concentration again or at least 75% increasing grains in concentration iodine concentration also increase selenium most increase iron short also some increase after application of cocktail micronutrients. And it's sure that it for their application or very effective irrespective of the region and countries. So, you know, one of the question is, hey, where's, where's the saying, yeah, in the green, I think you know where the saying and most of the micronutrients I don't have mainly located localize embryo part and other part. The endosperm part is the part that we eat, commonly, you know, the wheat grain is eaten after milling. And we usually consume the endosperm part of white flour and white flour is you see a very low in zinc concentration also in other micro and concentration of other micro is for example iron. So the question was how we can, what happens with the endosperm zinc after fully spray of zinc. So here, when you don't apply zinc, the zinc concentration in the endosperm part see here along the arrow. Yeah, this is the endosperm part is around five or below five milligram per kilogram. This is the zinc concentration that we eat every day in white bread. Yeah, this is five ppm, more less. But after for your application you see you can you can improve the endosperm and the flowers in concentration very significantly up to 234 this increase I have to say fantastic increase in terms of human nutrition, human health. Another point that I need to highlight today is the nitrogen fertilization nitrogen nutrition we have seen that nitrogen nutritional states of the plants is a key factor in enrichment of the food crops with singing either. We have seen that that serious particular serious respond to zinc iron fertilizer much much better than they nitrogen nutritional status is sufficient. Here one example or the reason behind, you know there are there are several pathway checkpoints let's say which affect the absorption and transportation. And transportation of micronutrients and in zinc and iron from roots to the shoot, and then retranslocation of zinc and iron from the shoot to the grade and the localization of micronutrients in the grade. All these are critical steps, all these are critical pathways directly affected from nitrogen nutritional status of the plants also sulfur nutritional states plants have impact on those steps. And therefore I highlight that the nitrogen nutritional states of the plant extremely important to to improve the micronutrient concentration of the plant. So here you see one exam from China in the base the results are based on the 32 field experiments. As you see here increase nitrogen fertilization increase nicely green same concentration. As I said, that's nitrogen nutrition effects not only the root absorption but also affect the retranslocation of the absorb iron and zinc from the leaves to the grain ages. The allocation the allocation of the zinc and iron in the vegetative tissue to the grid is is much better than the plants have good nitrogen nutrition. You see the here results with good nitrogen nutrition plans almost deliver 70% of the existing existing iron in the shoot to the grade in case of low nitrogen intensity 50 or 47%. I think you know very well today in the world, there are some regions where you apply too much nitrogen. There are some regions that where you apply very low nitrogen fertilizer like Sub-Saharan Africa. Sometimes I believe is saying that very low use of nitrogen fertilizer probably one of the main reasons for the well known hidden hunger problem Sub-Saharan Africa. And this is a point. This is a challenge of point that we need to think about. And when we are talking about the hidden hunger problem, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. And you heard about today Harvest Plus Program. You know Harvest Plus Program after long term successful breeding efforts started to release to deliver zinc and iron bio fortified maize rice weed genotype and very good progress. Yeah, successful progress that Harvest Plus Program show. And you know what we what we made in Harvest Zinc project use those Harvest bio fortified zinc bio fortified weed genotype and try to understand, hey, what is the reaction of this zinc bio fortified weed genotype to zinc fertilizer. And I see that those zinc bio fortified genotype respond very, very positively to zinc fertilizer more than than the local cultures. So I have to say there's a there's a there's a kind of synergism between plant breeding and fertilizer strategy. And I suggest I have to highlight the synergism between breeding and fertilizer strategy needs to be used extensively in future. And my conclusion is current management and production system are not able to provide sufficient micronutrients for optical dietary intake and for optimum nutrition. Plant nutrition offers, I mean fertilizer strategy offers highly effective solution for hidden hunger problem. And this strategy this plant nutrition strategy needs to be considered by policymakers, but also by fertilize industry. And now it is a time to consider and integrate this fertilizer approach into ongoing regional and national human nutrition programs and policies to address the problems of hidden hunger. Another point is, is considering the huge economic impacts of hidden hunger on GDP on the economy of the countries in the developing world incentive based solution should be implemented to encourage farmers to adopt agronomic bio fortification strategy. So, I mean, my last slide is, is highlights the focus on better food, not only just more food. Yeah, thank you. And I think also the partners of the global partners of the harvesting project in those 15 countries. Thanks. Thank you. It's my excellent overview. I've noticed that there is quite a few questions already in the Q&A box so you may want to have a look there, including some specific ones that I'm sure you'll be happy to answer. We move on to Professor Martin Broadley, who's a science director at Rossum State Research in the United Kingdom. And he will talk about soil and fertilizer based solid strategies to alleviate hidden hunger, which also means introducing a relatively new term called geo nutrition and work that he's been involved with in Africa but also Pakistan over to Martin. Thank you very much, Akim. I'm going to try and share my screen I actually pre recorded my talk because I didn't know what my internet connectivity would be today. And so I'm going to play the pre recorded talk, and I'll start now. Very well. Thank you for the invitation to speak today. My name is Martin Broadley. I'm based at Rothamsted Research in the United Kingdom, and I'm going to be talking about soil and fertilizer based strategies to alleviate hidden hunger. As we heard in the previous presentation, one of the most pressing micronutrient challenges is zinc. And these maps show the zinc supply and deficiency risks. The top map shows the zinc supply based on FAO food balance sheets combined with food composition data. And the map below shows the zinc deficiency risks. And what this highlights is the zinc deficiency risks and the prevalence of zinc deficiency risks are much greater in the global south. We can start to explore these data in a bit more detail if we go down to the national level. Here's an example for Malawi in which a secondary data analysis was conducted, whereby we looked at the food that people were reporting that they consume from dietary surveys, and we linked this with local food composition data. And from these maps, you can see that calcium deficiency risks are around 50% across the country of Malawi. Iron deficiency risks are at 18% across Malawi. If we look at other micronutrients such as iodine, in the absence of iodized salt, almost 100% of the population of Malawi is at risk for iodine deficiency, and then selenium and zinc are 74% and 57% deficiency risks, respectively. For the talk today, I'm going to focus largely on a project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation called Geo-nutrition. This project started about five years ago, and it involves a large number of partners from Malawi, Ethiopia, the UK, and international organizations from the CGIR. The Geo-nutrition project is exploring how the supply and receipt of food varies spatially, and it's operating and thinking about this at multiple scales across people, soils, crops, animals, trade, and health. And we're doing this so that we can map baseline deficiency risks so that we can explore the efficacy and effectiveness of interventions in terms of improving micronutrient deficiencies or reducing micronutrient deficiencies. We're thinking about agronomy, we're thinking about agronomic interventions to improve micronutrient supply and food systems. And we're also thinking about the wider context in terms of the socioeconomic, ethical, and capacity strengthening contexts of the work. I'm going to spend a little bit of time talking about the mapping of micronutrient deficiency risks, because this is critical when it comes to thinking about how we might go about alleviating these. We started this work in Malawi, working with the government who regularly conduct demographic and health surveys every four or five years in the country. The demographic and health survey teams work across the country, looking at demographic and health indicators in all of these areas here that are colored in brown and purple. And in the area that is colored in purple, they assess the micronutrient status of people in the villages in those areas. Now this is a very large logistical operation with implementing partners such as UNICEF, mobile laboratories are established in the villages. And in these laboratories, teams of researchers collect urine and blood samples to analyze subsequently in the laboratories for micronutrient biomarkers. Blood samples are spun down in the field to generate plasma and serum samples, and then these are frozen in mobile freezer units. Chilita Gondwe and Felix Peary work for the Ministry of Health in Malawi, and they were involved in coordinating these trials. And Felix was working on his PhD at the time to look at a different micronutrient that wasn't currently assessed in the Malawi Micronutrient Survey. And this element is selenium, this micronutrient, which is essential for animals, but not for plants, which makes it different to zinc. There are around 20 or so selenium protein genes encoded in the genomes of mammals, which we know have a range of functions, including lots of roles in health, including immunity, thyroid function, and cardiovascular health. And the work that Felix conducted as part of his PhD, using these samples and generating information from the survey, meant that we were able to map deficiency risks for the first time at a national level in southern Africa. The map on the left shows the concentration of selenium in the plasma of people, and the map on the right shows the likelihood that the plasma selenium, in this case in women of reproductive age, is below a specific threshold. The areas in blue on the map are where it is very unlikely that an individual will be below a particular threshold. The areas in red and pink means that it's very likely that an individual will be below a threshold, and the areas in grey are where it is uncertain based on the geostatistical analysis of these data. We then conducted a similar approach working with colleagues in Ethiopia. I'm Felix Biele, who was working for the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, and Daud Gashu, an academic in Addis Ababa University. Again, we looked at the National Micronutrient Survey that was being conducted in Ethiopia, and we were in again able to look at selenium as a biomarker of selenium status at a national scale. And you can see in this map that the concentration of selenium in the plasma of people is higher in the rift valley area and up in certain areas of the north of Ethiopia. When we plot this on a map to show the likelihood of being below a threshold again, again for women of reproductive age, we can see that there is quite a strong spatial component to this. So this is an area particularly in the west of Amara region and Aromia regions, where in these areas that are coloured in brown, the likelihood of being below a threshold of sufficiency for selenium is very high, tending towards one. We conducted a similar analysis for zinc, and now across the national scale in Ethiopia, you can see that most of the area is coloured in brown, meaning that it is very likely or virtually certain that an individual is below a threshold indicating zinc sufficiency. So from this we can conclude that zinc deficiency is ubiquitous across the country, whereas selenium deficiency is spatially dependent on where it is that one is living. In the geo nutrition project, we wanted to try and understand a little bit more about why this was the case. And so we started to work again with our national partners to establish what was happening in the food system in terms of the quality of soil and the quality of crops, in particular cereal crops that were growing on these soils. And this photograph shows our national partners working in a teff field that's recently been harvested and threshing the teff to get the grain, and in the background you can see colleagues sampling the soils in the same field. We did similar work in Malawi in 2018, working with small holder farmers and securing consent such that they provided us with access to grain and soils from their farms. And this image now shows the field teams in Malawi, there were eight field teams in total that went out and were able to survey soils and crops in a rather narrow harvest window of around four or five weeks in the period of May and June 2018. Now these maps show what that survey looks like. On the left we have Ethiopia, and we have the croplands, the main cropland areas shaded in gray. And super imposed on that are these triangles, and these triangles represent different crop types. So the dark blue triangles represent maize, for example, the light blue triangles represent teff, and the yellow triangles represent wheat. And you can see from this that Ethiopia has quite a diverse cereal system or set of cereal system. If we look at Malawi on the right here, most of the triangles are in blue dark blue, showing that most of the arable cropping area in Malawi is sown to maize. So it has a much less diverse cereal system than Ethiopia. Using a variety of geostatistical approaches, we can start to interpolate what we expect the likely concentration of a cereal grain is in a particular location. Here on the left we have Ethiopia, and this is now the predicted wheat grain selenium concentration in wheat. And we can start to see some of these spatial trends where the light green is lowest selenium concentrations in the grain and the dark green is higher selenium concentrations in the grain. For maize in Malawi, again, we can see similar spatial patterns. So these areas down in the south, for example, a darker green indicating that there is more selenium in the grain of the maize growing in these regions. We can convert these concentrations into what this might look like against an average requirement for that particular micronutrients. So in this case again for selenium, if we look at the yellow areas, in these areas, a person eating a typical wheat and teff diet would receive less than 20% of the average requirement from wheat and teff. If they were living in the areas where the orange or darker reds, then they would be getting over 80% of their average requirement of selenium living in those areas from wheat and teff. And again similarly over here for maize in Malawi. Now some of those geostatistical maps are quite hard to interpret and so we've been working again with geostatistical colleagues to try and understand how better to communicate these data. And this particular map shows the Amara, Aromia and Tigray regions of Ethiopia, which represent most of the cropland areas of Ethiopia. And what we've done here is we've mapped the average selenium concentration in teff grain at the district or warrider level. So here we can see now from the from the lighter green to the darker green, you can see some of these trends appearing, but it's now easier to see what regions and what areas we're talking about in terms of the average grain selenium in this case for the teff crop. We can also then start to look at these grain concentration data and we can plot them so we can plot grain selenium concentration on the x axis here and we can look at the serum selenium concentration on the y axis or the plasma selenium concentration here in the case of the Malawi data. And we see that there is a very strong correlation between the grain selenium concentration and the blood plasma or serum selenium concentration, indicating this linkage between what it is that people are eating and where they are living and the micronutrient concentration that they have in their systems. We've developed similar maps for other micronutrients such as calcium here on the left and zinc here on the right, and this is for teff on the upper maps and wheat on the lower maps, and this is for the Amara region of Ethiopia, again mapped at the district or warrider level. So if we look at the wheat zinc down here in the bottom right, you can see that those people living in the districts colored in lighter yellow are likely to be consuming wheat of around 20 parts per million. If you're living in the darker colored districts, then you're likely to be consuming wheat of around 26 to 28 29 parts per million or milligrams per kilogram. So again, these are quite substantial differences in serial dominated diets in terms of micronutrients intake. So these baselines are very important when we're thinking about efficacy and effectiveness of interventions to alleviate micronutrient malnutrition. I'd like to just briefly talk about a project also funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which we're developing, which is to create a web hosted tool to estimate micronutrient deficiencies and to explore pathways to improve nutrition. Again, with partners in Malawi, Ethiopia, and the US. The premise for this project is to try and unlock and to make available subnational insights of relevance to nutritional assessments, both now and under future scenarios, including how to assess the impact of new by a fortified variety of crops or fortification of food or agronomic practices that can change. This is just one illustration of the type of modeling work that's going on in the project from Kevin Tang and colleagues. And this is looking at a scenario again in Malawi, where they're looking at vitamin a and they're looking at the enrichment of food stuffs in this case, cooking oil with vitamin a. If you look from these three different maps, these three scenarios. This is the status quo in the middle in terms of the prevalence of inadequacy. If there was no fortification the prevalence of vitamin a inadequacy would increase substantially. If there was improved compliance with the fortification legislation, then there would be a decrease in inadequacy, and it's this type of modeling that map is undertake. And key interventions that we've heard about from Ishmael is the impact of by fortification and the use of breeding and agronomic practices to generate crops that have a greater nutritional density in their edible portions. There have been many by fortified crops released globally. All of these are non GM by fortified crops. And these cover a range of staples that are commonly consumed. We've been working with colleagues involved in the harvest plus program in Pakistan to look at G by E by M look at genotype times environment time management on how this affects the concentration of zinc in the grain of these crops in this case particularly wheat. And we've been working with the private sector in this case found you fertilizer company to start to understand underlying challenges such as low soil fertility in this case this is a map of soil zinc soil DTPA zinc where the areas in red are those that are virtually certain to be below a particular threshold for DTPA extractable. This is work that we've been doing, again, with found you fertilizer company to look at the impact of an introduction of a new by a fortified variety of wheat. In this case, a zinc called 2016. And this is a survey of around 720 farmers in Punjab province with the map on the right, showing the likelihood of zinc in the grain of wheat being below a threshold, compared to the variety that the farmer is typically growing on their farm. On the left, and you can see there's more blue on the map on the right, indicating that the growth of a by a fortified variety of crop of wheat will improve the supply of zinc in the food system. For the final few slides, I'm going to talk a little bit about agronomy, but I'm delighted to say that my colleague grace and Kangara will be speaking more about this shortly. So grace will be talking about some of the integrated soil fertility management options, which can lead to improvements in micronutrient quality of grains. Other work by simit have shown that again, the use of integrated soil fertility management, such as green manures can again improve the concentrations of micronutrients in the grains of crops grown at those sites. In terms of fertilizer use, we conducted a substantial amount of research with colleagues in Malawi to look at the potential for using selenium enriched fertilizers to improve the selenium concentration of maize grain in Malawi. And what we found was that it is remarkably simple to increase the selenium concentration of maize grain using a variety of different application methods. The red circles here represent a liquid drench of selenium, whereas the white and black circles represent different compounded granulated products. And these amounts and these applications of selenium are very small to generate a substantial uplift in grain selenium. And as you may be aware, the use of selenium enriched fertilizers has a precedent in Finland at a national scale, where in the early 1980s legislation was passed to add selenium to all fertilizers in Finland. And this led to a substantial increase in the plasma selenium concentration of the Finnish population. In 1992, the amount of selenium was reduced slightly in the fertilizers, leading to a decrease through to 1998 when it was increased again. So you can see the trend of fertilizer use, selenium fertilizer use spanning this period on this graph here. And this continues to this day. And we can send that such approaches are going to be essential for addressing some of the micronutrient challenges that we see today globally. Thank you very much. Thank you Martin. This worked really well. So again, have a look at the Q&A section. I'm sure there will be questions already. And that brings us to our final talk. I'm really happy to have with us today, Grace Kangara. Grace is a research fellow at the University of Zimbabwe and Nottingham University in the UK, and she will actually talk about Zimbabwe. What do you Grace? Your microphone is not working. No, not yet. Thank you very much Akim. I'll be sharing my presentation now. I'd like to start by thanking the coordinators for the invitation and I'm very glad to be here today to share my findings from Zimbabwe. I'll be presenting my topic today on advancing agronomic biofortification in Southern Africa. And this is from work which I largely did with the University of Zimbabwe. Allow me to say I'll be moving to Rotham State in June and I look forward to collaborating with the researchers at Rotham State. Zimbabwe population is around 15 million at the moment and 60% of this population is in small water farming systems. These systems have very strong livestock interactions where maize is the staple crop and cattle are regarded as a source of wealth and are important for meat and cattle manual provision. The soils in this small water farming systems are largely chromatic sandy soils and they're highly leached in nature and they have a sole pH of less than 4.5 and they occupy 60% of the land area. The other 30% of the land area is occupied by the rich, tolerate derived clay soils, which have larger sole pH and are more productive. So the majority of the soils which are sandy in nature, they are also deficient in essential nutrients such as nitrogen, was forest as well as zinc. Earlier work on zinc deficiency in Zimbabwe was conducted by Penelope Grant in 1981 when she was doing her studies in the sandy soils. In a work that's when zinc deficiency was first mentioned and she alluded that sandy soils are predominantly deficient in zinc in addition to the other nutrients that I mentioned earlier. Her work was then followed up by Farnio Taguira who did his work in these soils as well, now looking at the effect of lime and phosphorus on growth yields and zinc status of maize. In his studies, he just assessed the availability of zinc in soils and did not look at any effect of zinc fertilizers and their contribution to yield. Work which was done by Shemi Zingore around the late 2000s, looked at the so physical chemical properties of soils collected from the outfields in Murewa district, which is a small water farming area, and comparing them to the home fields, which often receive organic nutrient resources. And in his work, he showed that zinc is largely deficient in the sandy soils of the outfields compared to the sandy soils collected from the home fields which are closer to the homestead. Now I'll focus on the work which I did in small water farming systems since 2008 when I was doing my masters and from 2015 when I was doing my PhD with the University of Zimbabwe. In our first work, in our work when we started, we started off with a survey where we collected soil samples and grain samples from 120 farms in two contrasting agroecological regions. So these soils were then analyzed for zinc and the grain samples also analyzed for zinc concentration. Results from this work showed that the unfertilized fields in those fields which received only mineral nitrogen fertilizers, a low plant available zinc of less than 1.5 milligrams per kilogram. In contrast, the fields which grew maize after a legume, those are your typical legume serial rotations, and also fields which receive organic nutrient resources at relatively larger soil zinc concentrations of more than 1.5 milligram per kilogram. Now this translated to increased maize-grained zinc concentrations by 43%. So findings from this work show that farmer soil fertility management practices have an effect on soil zinc and also maize-grained zinc concentration. We then also did another survey now on a relatively larger scale where we collected 350 samples from two contrasting agroecological regions as well. Mutasa District, which is highlighted in blue, is to the eastern part of Zimbabwe and is the high rainfall potential area of the country, which receives over 1,000 millimeters of rainfall per annum from the months of November until the following year in April. And weather district, on the other hand, is in natural region two of the country and is a medium rainfall area receiving between 750 to around 800 millimeters per annum. So in this particular survey, we collected soil samples to look at the effect of the district, which is whether it's a high rainfall area or a medium rainfall area, and also the effect of soil type, top type, and we also included the effect of farmer management practices. Findings from this survey showed that there were larger soil zinc and iron concentration in weather, which is the medium rainfall area compared to Mutasa District. Soil type influenced soil iron, but not soil zinc concentration, where larger concentrations of iron were reported on clay soils than sandy soils. The field productivity level influenced soil zinc, but not soil iron concentration, where the most productive fields, which often receive organic nutrient resources, had larger soil zinc concentration compared to the least productive fields, which often do not receive organic nutrient resources. Crop type influenced grain iron, but not zinc concentration, where larger concentrations of iron were measured in your typical small grains, which were finger millet and sorghum in this study, and also in cow pee, which is a grain legume, but not in maize. Soil type had the least grain iron concentration. And lastly, field productivity level also influenced grain zinc, but not grain iron concentration. I'll now zero in on the effect of farmer productivity level on soil zinc and grain zinc concentration. And in my earlier slides that this survey was comparing the most productive fields in the least productive fields. So you will see in this figure that the most productive fields had larger soil iron soil zinc concentration, and the least productive fields had about half of that concentration. And this translated to about 13% increases in maize grain zinc concentration on the most productive fields. As Martin mentioned, we were also doing field experiments alongside the surface which we were conducting, looking at agronomic biofortification and its contribution to loading zinc and iron into maize, finger millet, and cow pee. So we started off by looking at effects of integrated soil fertility management, which is the co-application of organic nutrient resources and mineral fertilizer, complemented with soil zinc, foliar zinc, or foliar iron fertilizer. So we were looking at the effect of queso manua and also woodland leaf litter on zinc supply. Woodland leaf litter is a form of composts which farmers collect from the tropical miyombo woodlands, and they're composted during the dry months, and then they spread it into their fields. From our initial assessments, we measured the zinc in these organic nutrient resources, and our results showed that queso manua and woodland leaf litter have substantial amounts of zinc which could contribute to soil zinc supply and also grain zinc concentration. We were also looking at loading zinc and iron into maize, finger millet, and cow pee, as I mentioned earlier, through foliar fertilizers. These studies were done in the two study sites I showed you earlier, in the moderate rainfall area and also in the high rainfall area of Mutasa district. I will zero in on results from the integrated soil fertility management trials. This table is comparing three treatments with and without zinc. The first one was mineral nitrogen fertilizer at recommended rates of 90 kilograms in and 26 kilograms of phosphorus with and without zinc. We will also head the queso manua treatment with the same recommendation of mineral nitrogen fertilizer. Queso manua was applied at five times per hectare with and without zinc and also the mineral NPK fertilizer and the woodland leaf litter with and without zinc. You will see that from this table, the largest grains in concentration of around 35 milligrams per kilogram was attained in maize, which was grown with the woodland leaf litter, mineral nitrogen, and with zinc. As you may know, the zinc that is required in the grain to result in meaningful intake of zinc by humans is between 40 to 60 milligrams per kilogram. So you will see from these findings that if farmers use their locally available approaches and they supply zinc, they can be able to attain the recommended amount of zinc in their grain. It's also good to mention that the integrated soil fertility management practices with zinc also reported an increase in yield of about 22%. Lastly, from the field experiments, I will share findings from two experiments which we set up to look at the effect of nitrogen fertilizer management on grain zinc. So in this work, we were looking at effect of nitrogen applied in the form of mineral fertilizer or nitrogen applied in the form of organic nutrient resources, in this case, queso manua or effect of nitrogen applied as mineral in combination with organic nutrient resources. So these nitrogen fertilizers we applied its 30 kilograms and also its 90 kilograms of N. You will see from this figure that if farmers could apply 45 kilograms of mineral nitrogen, they can achieve grains in concentrations of about 40 milligrams per kilogram. Now smallholder farming systems, they often face challenges of purchasing fertilizer because they have financial resource limitations. So in this farming systems, even with 45 kilograms of nitrogen, you can still attain reasonable amounts of zinc in the main screen. And however, we did not see any similar effects in cow pee. We, from the experiments in the service that we conducted, we then wrote a paper to see the effect of farmer management on reducing dietary zinc deficiency. We did a disability adjusted life years calculation to see if the different management practices could result in reducing dietary zinc deficiency in Zimbabwe. From the current intake of zinc in Zimbabwe, zinc deficiency is a result in a loss of 12,000 disability adjusted life years. So if a person does not consume enough zinc, they are likely to suffer from the different diseases which Professor Katmack mentioned earlier. So in Zimbabwe, that results in a loss of healthy years of around 12,000. But if farmers could use good soil fertility management, such as integrated soil fertility management, complementing them with zinc, they could reduce those disability adjusted life years from 12,000 to around 3,000. So my findings show that it is important to use improved soil fertility management practices in reducing deficiency. I'll finish off by sharing preliminary progress on the Translating Geonutrition Project in Zimbabwe. This is a follow up work from the work which was presented earlier by Martin conducted in Ethiopia and in Malawi. So we did similar work in Zimbabwe where we collected over 800 samples of soils and grain in six contrasting districts in Zimbabwe. We also collected forage samples and saw samples from grazing lands to see the zinc status in the forage that the livestock consume. So these samples are still being analyzed and we look forward to sharing our results soon. I will just show you the progress of the sampling in these six districts, which was also done at the same amount of time of around four to five weeks as in Ethiopia and in Malawi. So the cereals which we collected were finger millet, maize, per millet, and so on, but the majority of them were maize samples. So I'll conclude by saying agronomic biofortification through integrated soil fertility management. So micronutrient fertilizer and nitrogen management has the capacity to increase grain micronutrient concentration and could potentially complement the ongoing genetic breeding efforts. However, there is a need for site specific and not prescriptive micronutrient recommendations in different agroecological regions and in different soil type. I think you all for your attention. Thank you, Chris. So we now still have about 10 minutes time to have a broader discussion so I'd like to ask all of the speakers to turn on their video and microphone again. I think what we have seen is in the last years and decades, a lot of scientific progress has been made, we have, I think, demonstrated the feasibility to enrich crops in a targeted manner with certain micronutrients, and others through genetic improvement or through the targeted use of fertilizers. I think a lot of this feasibility has been demonstrated in different crops for different nutrients. I think from what I've seen, we have seen in the presentations today, the solutions that are needed will have to be quite tailored to specific environmental conditions, because the crops are different, the soils are different, the crop management, the climate may be different. So it really is a matter of packaging this well and also really targeted into a specific environment and even market segment. So these are some of the lessons learned, I think. And now let's have a look at some of the remaining questions. I noticed that about 24 of them have been answered already, so which is really great. Let's look at a few other ones. How helpful do you think bio stimulants could be to increase micronutrient uptake if, for example, combined with adopted fertilizers. Maybe something for Ismail to tackle. I came, I didn't see any paper research about this topic, so I cannot answer this question without knowing any research based evidence. So basically the answer is this is something we don't know much about yet. This probably also relates to the general question that the bio stimulants are more complex organic molecules for which the modes of actions are not easy to decipher. And, but there's some indication that they have impact on nutrient due sufficiency implants in general, but certainly an area to study more. There is a question about Zincol variety. Although Ismail is already typing an answer, I guess it's been observed that the yield could be lower as compared to other varieties as potentially making it less acceptable to farmers for cultivation. We have conducted filtres in Pakistan by using Zincol and two years and in our results, I mean, we have seen that the yield performance of Zincol was not lower than the common. We have used countries like Faisalabad and even better. And I know from the hardest class programs, the results also showing that the Zincol is really doing very well. And therefore, as I hear that the coverage of the Zincol in the country is growing. I mean the cultivated area with Zincol is growing. I would also assume that and that depends, of course, on policies in the country but many countries in Asia have national guidelines for variety of release that also require that certain level of yield performance need to be demonstrated in variety trials on the different conditions before any variety could be released. Do you know more Martin. There was another recent release in Pakistan, Akbar 2019. I was just wondering if one of our audience from Pakistan might comment on whether the Akbar 2019 variety was yielding effectively as well. So I think it's about the principle is really about mainstreaming the high zinc traits into the wheat now so that there's a whole schedule of new varieties coming online. And I think from a breeding point of view that there cannot be any trade off in terms of yield. You cannot compromise on that. So it's essentially additional nutritional value for at least the same level of yield, if not even a slight yield increase. A question to grace. If the pH was less than 4.5 and when adding leaf litter, I assume this will increase the pH, which would mean that zinc uptake could be lowered, but in your study the zinc uptake increased could you clarify that. Thank you for the question. Yes, I agree. Our souls have very low pH and it could be the reason why the zinc uptake and also productivity is limited. And I agree that organic safety capacity to increase the sole pH and improve nutrient uptake. But like I mentioned earlier that these resources also have zinc when we measure them. So we know that they cannot supply the zinc. Also, they can improve so physical and chemical properties as well. Good. And I would expect that if you put any kind of organic materials on it. It will increase the pH maybe a little bit which will actually improve zinc availability. You're obviously not entering a territory where a very high pH where zinc availability would be less again. Good. Another question for you, Karen Grace. Am I correct in understanding that genotype environment interactions affect the replicability of results, which would of course detract from the efficiency of fertilizer application as a bio fortification message. Thank you, Kim. But I think I would want to pass that one to Martin as they did work on she buy. Sorry, I was typing an answer that I didn't hear. I wasn't listening. I'm sorry. Can I answer jangs first to say and thank you for your comments. I think the involvement of the private sector is absolutely essential in terms of scaling and thinking about agronomic bio fortification. I think there's an interesting nuance here as well. I think the private sector shouldn't necessarily be expected to be taking on board the costs for kind of public health benefits when they extend beyond yield. There's an interesting blend of approaches that might be considered whereby some of the costs can be taken on by the private sector where there are yield improvements, where there are non yield improvements but quality improvements. I think there's a strong role for government to work with the private sector on providing inputs for those benefits. That's a great question, Martin. Right, okay. You're not going to get away without answering that one. Is this the one from Penicillin about, yeah, okay, so so yeah it's a really good question. We see when we look at different landscape positions, for example, with multiple crop with multiple crops and zinc fertilizers we see, we see different responses in terms of both yield and quality. And it's often those sites that are that are on steeper slopes. So from valley bottoms in particular where you have complex landscape cropping systems such as in Ethiopia, we see a better performance of the crops growing on the steeper slopes in terms of their quality response to zinc fertilizers. So that will be greater than anything you'd see in terms of a variety effect. And so it's absolutely critical that we factor in G by E by M to all of these I don't think there's a single silver bullet here we need to think about about all the components to improve the nutritional quality outcome. The G by effect could be more relevant in case of soil application, but less relevant in case of for your applications. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I think in general there are maybe situations where a broad solution, like the Finnish solution I call it, you know, a policy decision to say every fertilizer needs to have a bit of Selenium. So that that may work in certain situations, you know, whereas in others you need to be much more specific in terms of the actual solution and in some cases you may have to go down to even a relatively smaller level of the tailoring fertilizer plans to a more specific larger environment. Yeah, I think everything of these or anything of these have a role to play in this in this whole picture. There's a question about zinc biofortification in in chickpea. Is it, would it be in any way different from serial biofortification processes. And is there any sort of leading program in this area and policies for fortification. I think we compared the common being with weed and it is correct the response of the common being to agronomic biofortification less than the series that why in my presentation you will you will remember I highlight the series respond much more to zinc fertilization I think the reason is related to the low nitrogen protein concentration in the series compared to the dikos legumes. You know, the nitrogen concentration is really key when you when you, you have seen some room to improve the same concentration in the series by improving nitrogen in the individual states of the plants and grace show that that they that the response of the nitrogen fertilization of copy was less compared to the series. I think the issue is related to the nitrogen states of the plants and copy legumes they are still doing getting nitrogen from the soil via the nitrogen fixation process, which probably affect the impact and of the agronomic biofortification on on on grain, in the in the tissue, you know, the legumes are usually have more zinc than the series, then you analyze the soybean for zinc is this modern 30 ppm 40 ppm, even sometimes we see 60 people and they are, they have already the high zinc. So there is a little space or room to further increase the zinc in the in the in the grains in the case of legumes. Now there are studies that show how phosphorus and zinc uptake in the free with each other. Yeah, we work was a lot about that. Yes, it was one of my part of my case you said this many many years ago in home and so yes phosphorus reduces zinc uptake this is very well known but the reasons not related to the zinc phosphorus precipitation. The reasons related to my chorizo colonization of the rules, you know my chorizo is very sensitive to high phosphorus and my chorizo this was a one there was a question about this and I am answering this question. What is the role of microbes soil microbes in the in biofortification and I have to say my chorizo is a key microbes in the source affecting zinc uptake of the plant up to 50% of the zinc accumulation in the plants, maintained by my chorizo and my chorizo is highly sensitive to phosphorus fertilization therefore increasing the phosphorus fertilization would reduce the my chorizo activity in the source and therefore we reduce the my chorizo dependent zinc uptake. So therefore zinc content phosphorus fertilizer would be one option one solution to this problem. I have a few more plant nutrition questions for plant nutrition niche here for effective think are going to make biofortification is it necessary to have concomitant increase in protein content as there is a zinc protein association. I think protein is zinc for zinc. I mean the higher the protein the grain usually to find higher zinc, because protein is a storage compound for for zinc like fighting. So, in series, we usually have less protein yeah we can push the protein concentration in the grain, and which this, which, which could affect the absorption transportation and the position of the zinc in the grain. So by manipulating the nitrogen nutrition status or by manipulating the protein concentration of the plants, we can manipulate the zinc and iron concentration part of it in series. Nitrogen nutrition affects positively the uptake of zinc and iron do you see any differences between nitrates ammonia or urea as nitrogen sources in that. So this effect I mean we compared all form of nitrogen and found the nitrate nutrition is more relevant than ammonia normally people said, you smiled, are you sure because I'm more in fertilization, reduce the pH. I see the pilot rise was fairly the plan should absorb more iron and saying, but it's not the case, I have to say, the nitrate is a key. The reason is very simple. If you increase the night, night, I mean the nitrogen nutrition of the plant by nitrate application, you increase the negative charge within the tissue within the cells, and this negative charge. The charge is to absorb more cutting nutrients and zinc and iron uptake also stimulated by nitrate application we publish four or five papers about that and two cases have been conducted really nitrate has more is more effective than the ammonium or urea in terms of uptake and accumulation of zinc and iron the reasons related to the charge in the tissue because nitrate increase in negative charge which stimulate the absorption of the cutting nutrients. I take one more question and then we have to bring this to a closure. Could you please comment, maybe any of you about manufacturing compound fertilizers containing both zinc and phosphorus. What would be some of the solutions or challenges there. When you apply phosphorus alone, you may induce zinc deficiencies just because of the reduction of the mycorrhizal activity. Therefore the solution is apply zinc content fertilizer zinc content phosphorus fertilizer so this is my suggestion. Martin, you have any other suggestions a little. Other than to look at the work of people like Mike McLaughlin who've done a lot of work on on solubilization and zinc phosphorus fertilizers. Well, excellent. I think this has been a very, very interesting seminar. I appreciate the time that you've made available and also shown us some concrete examples. So I think the challenge now is really how we can take these kinds of innovations to a larger scale and make them work in a whole country or many countries, you know, which is not something that anyone can do easily alone. It requires, in some cases, the right kind of policies, but I think it also requires for the fertilizer industry and companies working in that sector to see this as a new opportunity to make a direct contribution, not just to crop nutrition or crop yields and crop, agronomic crop improvement, but also to human nutrition. We in EFA have that as one of our six industry ambitions for the next two decades. We are at present exploring where we could establish some large scale case studies at the level of a whole country, you know, to basically ask the question in this particular country, what is the opportunity for this and how would one go about it? What are the main intervention solutions that the product profiles needed for this and who would need to do what? And what is the cost of it and in the end to who pays for that extra cost as Martin has already alluded to. These are difficult questions because obviously we cannot necessarily ask the farmer to pay more for a fertilizer that benefits the consumer in the end. There is a gap there that needs to be covered by someone or somebody and these are some of the practical questions that we will have to look at. I encourage anyone who has more interest in this to get back to me or others with any expressions of interest or questions or to the speakers directly. I'm assuming that those who registered for the webinar today will receive a message pointing out where you can find the presentations and recorded talks. And with that, thank you all for joining and hope to see you again in a few months when we have our next FAO EFA webinar. Thank you very much.