Staple crops as a key hub of biogeochemical mercury cycle across China
Yu-Kun Wang, Shuhai Wen, Nantao Liu, Yun-Yun Hao, Long Chen, Jiao Feng, Yanxu Zhang, Xun Wang, Yu-Rong Liu · 2026
Read Staple crops as a key hub of biogeochemical mercury cycle across China by Yu-Kun Wang, Shuhai Wen, Nantao Liu, Yun-Yun Hao, Long Chen, Jiao Feng, Yanxu Zhang, Xun Wang, Yu-Rong Liu (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13522622.txt.
Description
Yu-Kun Wang and collaborators quantify how staple crops move mercury through the environment in China in a 2026 field study. Wheat, rice, and maize were sampled at three hundred one sites nationwide. Chemical signatures were used to tell whether the mercury in plants came mainly from the air or from the soil, since mercury is a toxic element of global concern.
The three crops together took up a substantial annual amount of mercury, split almost evenly between air and soil sources. Three farming regions were predicted as accumulation hotspots. After harvest, roughly a third of the mercury returned to soil in residues, while a larger share entered the food chain through grain eaten by people and straw fed to livestock. Crops thus act as a central hub in mercury cycling.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Yu-Kun Wang, Shuhai Wen, Nantao Liu, Yun-Yun Hao, Long Chen, Jiao Feng, Yanxu Zhang, Xun Wang, Yu-Rong Liu |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 59 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |