One day, a brand-new approach to managing agricultural pests may gain traction. It would target crop infestations deep below and use fewer pesticides to do it.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have created nanoparticles made from plant viruses that can transport pesticide molecules to previously inaccessible soil depths. By reducing expenses, pesticide use, and environmental toxicity, this development may enable farmers to efficiently battle parasitic nematodes that infest crop roots.
Agriculture has long struggled to effectively manage infestations brought on by nematodes that cause root damage. The types of insecticides used to combat nematodes have a tendency to stick to the upper soil layers, making it challenging to penetrate the root zone where worms cause damage. As a result, farmers frequently revert to using excessive amounts of pesticide as well as water to wash chemicals down to the root zone. Groundwater and soil pollution may result from this.
A team led by Nicole Steinmetz, a professor of nanoengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and the founding director of the Centre for Nano-ImmunoEngineering, created plant virus nanoparticles that can deliver pesticide molecules deep into the soil, precisely where they are needed, in an effort to find a more long-lasting and efficient solution. A study that was published in Nano Letters describes the experiment in full.
Steinmetz's team modified this idea for agriculture by drawing inspiration from nanomedicine, where nanoparticles are being developed for precise medication delivery. Steinmetz is a co-lead of the UC San Diego Materials Research Science and Engineering Centre (MRSEC), whose focal area includes the notion of reusing and rebuilding biological materials for various uses.
Senior author of the research Steinmetz stated, "We're developing a precision farming approach where we're creating nanoparticles for targeted pesticide delivery." The potential of this technique is to boost treatment efficacy in the field without raising pesticide dose.
The tobacco mild green mosaic virus, a plant virus that can easily travel through soil, is the star of this strategy. By eliminating the RNA from these engineered viral nanoparticles, researchers made them incapable of infecting crops. They then heated these nanoparticles, combined them with pesticide solutions, and produced spherical, virus-like nanoparticles that were packed with pesticides using a straightforward one-pot synthesis.
The benefits of this one-pot synthesis are numerous. First of all, it is inexpensive and has a simple purifying procedure with only a few stages. According to Steinmetz, the outcome is a more scalable process that opens the door to a product that farmers can afford. Second, the pesticide's original chemical structure is preserved by using this approach rather than chemically attaching the pesticide to the surface. The pesticide is simply packaged inside the nanoparticles.
Adam Caparco, a postdoctoral researcher in Steinmetz's lab, is the study's first author. "If we had used a traditional synthetic method where we link the pesticide molecules to the nanoparticles, we would have essentially created a new compound, which will need to go through a whole new registration and regulatory approval process," he said. But since the pesticide is just being encapsulated within the nanoparticles, the active component isn't changing, thus we won't need to obtain fresh authorisation for it. That may speed up the commercialization of this technology.
In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has previously authorised the use of the tobacco mild green mosaic virus as a pesticide to manage the invasive tropical soda apple plant. This already-approved procedure may be made even more efficient from the lab to the market.
The effectiveness of the pesticide-filled nanoparticles was tested in the lab by the researchers. The pesticides were successfully carried by the nanoparticles to depths of at least 10 centimetres by being watered through columns of soil. The pesticide-filled nanoparticles were discovered in the solutions that were collected from the bottom of the soil columns. When the scientists used these solutions to treat nematodes in a petri dish, they were able to get rid of at least half of the population.
Although the nanoparticles have not yet been tested on soil-dwelling nematodes, the researchers stress that this work represents a significant advancement.
According to Caparco, "our technology enables the use of pesticides intended to combat nematodes in the soil." These insecticides can't get into the soil by themselves. However, thanks to our nanoparticles, they can now go through the soil, get to the roots, and perhaps even kill the nematodes.
In order to determine the nanoparticles' efficacy in actual plant infestations for agricultural applications, further study will test the particles on infected plants. Together with the US Horticultural Research Laboratory, Steinmetz's lab will carry out these follow-up investigations. The advancement of the nanoparticles into a commercial product is another goal that her team has set plans to further.
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