Implications of nanotechnology on plant productivity and its rhizospheric environment

Abstract

Nanotechnology requires the ability to understand the materials and precisely manipulate it to nanoscale in a useful way. Nanotechnology emerged as a new broad science of diverse fields such as basic sciences, materials science, and engineering to assemble at the nanoscale. In contrast to conventional or other contaminants, nanoparticles are posing some new environmental challenges for scientists and environmentalists worldwide. Being a new area of science, nanotechnology will leave no field untouched including agriculture and allied sectors. So far, the use of nanotechnology in agriculture has been mostly theoretical, but it has begun to have a significant effect in the main areas of agrochemical industry. Nanoparticles finding great potential as delivery systems to specific targets in living organisms and is being used in medical sciences. In plants, the same principles can be applied for a broad range of uses, particularly to tackle phytopathological infections, nutrition supplement and as growth adjuvant. Nanoparticles can be tagged to agrochemicals or other substances as delivery agent to plant system and tissues for controlled release of chemicals. Doing so, the negative effects of nanomaterials on plant productivity and soil microbes and environment must not be overlooked, such as toxicity generated by free radicals leading to lipid peroxidation and DNA damage. Key focus of the chapter particularly relates the use of nanoparticles on agricultural crops and its toxic implications to plants and microbes naturally present in soil and generation of nanowaste in agroecosystem.