Estimates of Dietary Mineral Micronutrient Supply from Staple Cereals in Ethiopia at a District Level.

Recent surveys have revealed substantial spatial variation in the micronutrient composition of cereals in Ethiopia, where a single national micronutrient concentration values for cereal grains are of limited use for estimating typical micronutrient intakes. We estimated the district-level dietary mineral supply of staple cereals, combining district-level cereal production and crop mineral composition data, assuming cereal consumption of 300 g capita day proportional to district-level production quantity of each cereal. We considered Barley ( L.), maize ( L.), sorghum ( (L.) Moench), teff ( (Zuccagni) Trotter), and wheat ( L.) consumption representing 93.5% of the total cereal production in the three major agrarian regions. On average, grain cereals can supply 146, 23, and 7.1 mg capita day of Ca, Fe, and Zn, respectively. In addition, the Se supply was 25 µg capita day. Even at district-level, cereals differ by their mineral composition, causing a wide range of variation in their contribution to the daily dietary requirements, i.e., for an adult woman: 1-48% of Ca, 34-724% of Fe, 17-191% of Se, and 48-95% of Zn. There was considerable variability in the dietary supply of Ca, Fe, Se, and Zn from staple cereals between districts in Ethiopia.