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Nanoscale Innovation for Enhancing Crop Plant Immunity to Climate Stress (NanoCrop)
Secondary Supervisor(s): Dr Zhiling Guo
University of Registration: University of Birmingham
BBSRC Research Themes: Sustainable Agriculture and Food (Plant and Crop Science)
Project Outline
Vision
NanoCROP aims to leverage the unique properties of nanomaterials (NMs) to boost crop immunity and resilience to climate-induced stresses. Through the tailored NMs, this project will lay the groundwork for next-generation agricultural practices that enhance crop sustainability in an increasingly volatile climate.
Background and Scientific Rationale
Agriculture faces growing challenges as climate change exacerbates abiotic and biotic stresses on crops, including extreme temperatures, drought, salinity, and increased pathogen and pest pressures. These stresses negatively impact crop yield, quality, and overall resilience, threatening global food security. Conventional methods such as selective breeding and genetic modification have improved crop stress tolerance, but these approaches are time-intensive and often limited in scope.
Nanotechnology offers a promising, innovative solution to address these challenges. Nanoscale materials have unique properties that can be harnessed to enhance plant immunity and stress resistance. These NMs, with their ability to interact at the molecular and cellular levels, could help crops withstand environmental stressors by improving water retention, enhancing nutrient uptake, and activating plant defense mechanisms. Furthermore, NMs can be engineered for controlled release and targeted delivery, making them highly efficient for agricultural use. NanoCROP project aims to explore the potential of nanoscale innovation to enhance crop resilience to climate-induced stress whilst ensuring safety.
Approach
The overarching goal of NanoCROP is to develop and apply nanoscale technologies to strengthen crop plant immunity and resilience against climate-related stress factors. Specifically, we will develop multifunctional nanoscale materials (e.g., metallic nanoparticles and polymer-based nanocomposites) that enhance crop stress tolerance to drought and salinity (Objective 1). The metal NMs will use silicon, copper, zinc, and molybdenum that are essential micronutrient for plants. Natural and responsive polymers such as chitosan, pectin will be used as a carrier or coating to enable responsive and sustainable release of these NMs to function on-demand.
We will use model crop plants (wheat and maize) to evaluate the performance of the NMs (objective 2). The experiments will be carried out in the Advanced Wolfson Glasshouse at UoB. The NMs will be applied via foliar spray, seed priming, or soil amendment. Crops will be subjected to drought and salinity stress, to assess nanomaterial-induced stress tolerance. Key physiological parameters (e.g., stomatal conductance, chlorophyll content etc), biochemical responses (e.g., antioxidant enzymes, stress hormones) that mitigate oxidative stress, and metabolomic responses will be measured alongside yield parameters. The translocation and uptake of the NMs will be analysed to elucidate the chemical mechanisms involved (Objective 3). This will be done by using advanced synchrotron radiation - based techniques such as X-ray fluorescence, X-ray fine structure spectroscopy and soft X-ray imaging.
Whilst ensure efficacy, we will also ensure the safe and sustainable use of NMs in agriculture (Objective 4). NanoCROP will incorporate a thorough environmental impact assessment. Leaching potential, NMs residual in soil, and effects on non-target organisms (e.g., beneficial microbes, earthworms and human cells) will be evaluated using mesocosm studies. The optimized NMs with minimum safety issues and best performance will be screened out for future use.
Key References
Li, Mingshu, et al. "Nano-enabled strategies to enhance biological nitrogen fixation." Nat. Nanotechnol. 2023, 18: 688-691.
Zhang, Peng, et al. "Strategies for Enhancing Plant Immunity and Resilience Using Nanomaterial for Sustainable Agriculture." Environ. Sci. Technol. 2024, 58, 9051-9060.
