To meet the demand for food and energy, a growing human population will require a significant increase in agricultural productivity. Efforts towards this goal are impaired by environmental and biological stresses that lead to major crop losses worldwide and highly inefficient use of agrochemicals in which most never reach their targets in plants. Nanotechnology offers promising tools for improving tolerance to plant stresses, monitoring crop health status, and enabling more efficient delivery systems for resources including fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. A key target for nanobioengineering plant stress tolerance and resource use are chloroplasts, photosynthetic organelles associated with tolerance to stresses, nutrient assimilation, and signaling of health status. For example, cerium oxide nanoparticles delivered to chloroplasts increase plant photosynthetic performance under stresses including high light, heat, chilling and salinity. Single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) can act as genetic element delivery platforms for chloroplasts for improving plant tolerance to stress and enabling smart plants that report health status to agricultural and phenotyping devices. SWCNT are also optical nanosensors allowing plants to communicate their invisible chemical signals generated by chloroplasts to electronic devices. The translation of these advances in plant nanobiotechnology to agriculture are limited by our understanding of mechanisms for efficient, scalable, and biocompatible foliar delivery of nanomaterials to chloroplasts in crops. Engineered nanomaterials (ENM) coated with targeting moieties localize to specific plant subcellular compartments including chloroplasts. Carbon based quantum dots (CDs) are fluorescent, traceable and biocompatible nanoparticles that allow facile surface chemistry and size modifications, and can act as model ENM for understanding plant-nanoparticle interactions. By developing models of leaf-nanoparticle interactions based on ENM chemical and physical properties, we may enable a more sustainable use of resources in crops through targeted delivery of nanomaterial based agrochemicals, biomolecules, and sensors in crops. Increasing total agricultural productivity will require innovative and convergent technological approaches at the nexus of nanotechnology, plant biology, high-throughput phenotyping, and precision agriculture.

Improving plant stress tolerance and resource use through chloroplast nanobiotechnology

2019 Spring National Meeting

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