BACKGROUND Rice is the primary source of food for billions of people in developing countries, yet the commonly consumed polished grain contains insufficient levels of the key micronutrients iron (Fe), zinc (Zn) and Vitamin A to meet daily dietary requirements. Experts estimate that a rice-based diet should contain 14.5 µg g(-1) Fe in endosperm, the main constituent of polished grain, but breedi...

Bio-fortification of food crops is a cost-effective and sustainable agricultural strategy to decrease malnutrition arising from micronutrients deficiencies. Accordingly, the pot experiments have been conducted to investigate the effectiveness of various foliar-applied iron (Fe) fertilizers in increasing agro-morphological traits and grain micronutrients concentrations of bread wheat plants unde...

Despite their relatively simple mineralogical composition (olivine + Fe–Ni metal + FeS ± pyroxene), the origin of pallasite meteorites remains debated. It has been suggested that catastrophic mixing of olivine fragments with Fe–(Ni)–S followed by various degrees of annealing could explain pallasites bearing solely or prevalently fragmented or rounded olivines. In order to verify this hypothesis...

Magnetic small-angle neutron scattering experiments were performed on nanostructured Fe, Co and Ni samples of varying grain size, produced by inert-gas condensation. The experiments show that the spontaneous spatial magnetic correlations forming in zero-field extend over many individual grains. These correlations depend strongly on grain size. In Fe, they have a minimum at a grain size of aroun...

Influence of microstructure on electrochemical behavior of nanocrystalline Fe88Si12 alloy has been investigated in 3.5 wt% NaCl solution. The results show that Fe88Si12 alloy with optimal corrosion resistance is composite of ordered Fe3Si and disordered Fe(Si) phases and grain size of 40 nm. Because the ordered Fe3Si structure is beneficial to form SiO2 film, which possesses good corrosion resi...

In this paper we study the changes in iron concentrations and distributions in multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) wafers after annealing in the temperature range of 600-900 o C. The dissolved Fe distributions across mc-Si wafers are obtained by photoluminescence imaging taken before and after dissociation of FeB pairs. The results show that the precipitation of dissolved Fe, both near the grain b...

The relationships between grain yields and whole-plant accumulation of micronutrients such as zinc (Zn), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn) and copper (Cu) in maize (Zea mays L.) were investigated by studying their reciprocal internal efficiencies (RIEs, g of micronutrient requirement in plant dry matter per Mg of grain). Field experiments were conducted from 2008 to 2011 in North China to evaluate RIEs...

Increasing the concentrations of Fe and Zn in staple food crops through breeding has been proposed as one strategy to minimize the adverse effects of widespread mineral deficiencies in humans. This approach requires the presence of adequate genetic differences in concentrations of grain minerals for improvement. Eight trials involving different sets of tropical maize inbred lines adapted to the...

In this paper, a multiscale modelling strategy is used to study the effect of grain-boundary sliding on stress localization in a polycrystalline microstructure with an uneven distribution of grain size. The development of the molecular dynamics (MD) analysis used to interrogate idealized grain microstructures with various types of grain boundaries and the multiscale modelling strategies for mod...

Zinc (Zn) and iron (Fe) deficiencies are well-documented public health issue and an important soil constraint to crop production. Generally, there is a close geographical overlap between soil deficiency and human deficiency of Zn and Fe, indicating a high requirement for increasing concentrations of micronutrients in food crops. Breeding new plant genotypes for high grain concentrations of Fe a...