Climate change as an amplifier of nutritional decline in cereal crops: the overlooked role of viral disease

Cereals are crucial to global food security, yet their nutritional quality faces a compounding threat from climate change and viral disease. Climate change is degrading the nutritional quality of cereal grains and crop residues mainly through CO 2 -driven nutrient dilution, heat-abbreviated grain filling, drought-impaired nutrient transport, and reductions in straw protein and mineral content with consequences for both human food and livestock feed. Major cereal viruses disrupt the same physiological processes that govern grain nutritional quality, namely, photosynthesis, phloem transport, and nitrogen metabolism; however, in addition to their well-documented yield losses, their effects on grain and foliage nutritional quality are rarely measured. This perspective highlights that climate-driven nutritional deterioration and climate-amplified viral infection converge on shared physiological targets, producing compounded nutritional decline. We identify a systematic analytical blind spot wherein reduced grain size under stress inflates nutrient concentration percentages while absolute nutrient mass falls, potentially misleading interpretation of nutritional outcomes. A bibliometric analysis of two major databases reveals a stark research gap: studies on the effects of climate change on cereal yield and cereal nutrition vastly outnumber those examining viral effects on cereal nutrition, while the triple intersection of climate change, cereal viral disease, and grain nutrition remains largely unstudied. Closing this gap requires routine integration of nutritional endpoints into existing virus-pathology and climate–crop experimental designs, supported by factorial studies to guide breeding and food security modelling under a changing climate.