Tag Archives: Pratim Biswas

All-natural agrochemicals

Michael Berger in his May 4, 2018 Nanowerk Spotlight article highlights research into creating all natural agrochemicals,

Widespread use of synthetic agrochemicals in crop protection has led to serious concerns of environmental contamination and increased resistance in plant-based pathogenic microbes.

In an effort to develop bio-based and non-synthetic alternatives, nanobiotechnology researchers are looking to plants that possess natural antimicrobial properties.

Thymol, an essential oil component of thyme, is such a plant and known for its antimicrobial activity. However, it has low water solubility, which reduces its biological activity and limits its application through aqueous medium. In addition, thymol is physically and chemically unstable in the presence of oxygen, light and temperature, which drastically reduces its effectiveness.

Scientists in India have overcome these obstacles by preparing thymol nanoemulsions where thymol is converted into nanoscale droplets using a plant-based surfactant known as saponin (a glycoside of the Quillaja tree). Due to this encapsulation, thymol becomes physically and chemically stable in the aqueous medium (the emulsion remained stable for three months).

In their work, the researchers show that nanoscale thymol’s antibacterial and antifungal properties not only prevent plant disease but that it also enhances plant growth.

“It is exciting how nanoscale thymol is more active,” says Saharan [Dr. Vinod Saharan from the Nano Research Facility Lab, Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, at Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology], who led this work in collaboration with Washington University in St. Louis and Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar. “We found that nanoscale droplets of thymol can easily pass through the surfaces of bacteria, fungi and plants and exhibit much faster and strong activity. In addition nanodroplets of thymol have a larger surface area, i.e. more molecules on the surface, so thymol becomes more active at the target sites.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Thymol nanoemulsion exhibits potential antibacterial activity against bacterial pustule disease and growth promotory effect on soybean by Sarita Kumari, R. V. Kumaraswamy, Ram Chandra Choudhary, S. S. Sharma, Ajay Pal, Ramesh Raliya, Pratim Biswas, & Vinod Saharan. Scientific Reportsvolume 8, Article number: 6650 (2018) doi:10.1038/s41598-018-24871-5 Published: 27 April 2018

This paper is open access.

Final note

There is a Canadian company which specialises in nanoscale products for the agricultural sector, Vive Crop Protection. I don’t believe they claim their products are ‘green’ but due to the smaller quantities needed of Vive Crop Protection’s products, the environmental impact is less than that of traditional agrochemicals.

Locusts inspire new aerosol-based nanoparticle drug delivery system

Getting medication directly to the brain is a worldwide medical research goal and it seems that a team of scientists at the Washington University at St. Louis (WUSTL) has taken a step forward to accomplishing the goal. From an April 12, 2017 news item on ScienceDaily,

Delivering life-saving drugs directly to the brain in a safe and effective way is a challenge for medical providers. One key reason: the blood-brain barrier, which protects the brain from tissue-specific drug delivery. Methods such as an injection or a pill aren’t as precise or immediate as doctors might prefer, and ensuring delivery right to the brain often requires invasive, risky techniques.

A team of engineers from Washington University in St. Louis has developed a new nanoparticle generation-delivery method that could someday vastly improve drug delivery to the brain, making it as simple as a sniff.

“This would be a nanoparticle nasal spray, and the delivery system could allow a therapeutic dose of medicine to reach the brain within 30 minutes to one hour,” said Ramesh Raliya, research scientist at the School of Engineering & Applied Science.

Caption: Engineers at Washington University have discovered a new technique that could change drug delivery to the brain. They were able to apply a nanoparticle aerosol spray to the antenna of locusts, then track the nanoparticles as they traveled through the olfactory nerves, crossed the blood-brain barrier and accumulated in the brain. This new, non-invasive approach could someday make drug delivery as simple as a sniff for patients with brain injuries or tumors.

Credit: Washington University in St. Louis

An April 12, 2017 WUSTL news release by Erika Ebsworth-Goold (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, describes the work in more detail,

“The blood-brain barrier protects the brain from foreign substances in the blood that may injure the brain,” Raliya said. “But when we need to deliver something there, getting through that barrier is difficult and invasive. Our non-invasive technique can deliver drugs via nanoparticles, so there’s less risk and better response times.”

The novel approach is based on aerosol science and engineering principles that allow the generation of monodisperse nanoparticles, which can deposit on upper regions of the nasal cavity via diffusion. Working with Assistant Vice Chancellor Pratim Biswas, chair of the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering and the Lucy & Stanley Lopata Professor, Raliya developed an aerosol consisting of gold nanoparticles of controlled size, shape and surface charge. The nanoparticles were tagged with fluorescent markers, allowing the researchers to track their movement.

Next, Raliya and biomedical engineering postdoctoral fellow Debajit Saha exposed locusts’ antennae to the aerosol, and observed the nanoparticles travel from the antennas up through the olfactory nerves. Due to their tiny size, the nanoparticles passed through the brain-blood barrier, reaching the brain and suffusing it in a matter of minutes.

The team tested the concept in locusts because the blood-brain barriers in the insects and humans have anatomical similarities, and the researchers consider going through the nasal regions to neural pathways as the optimal way to access the brain.

“The shortest and possibly the easiest path to the brain is through your nose,” said Barani Raman, associate professor of biomedical engineering. “Your nose, the olfactory bulb and then olfactory cortex: two relays and you’ve reached the cortex. The same is true for invertebrate olfactory circuitry, although the latter is a relatively simpler system, with supraesophageal ganglion instead of an olfactory bulb and cortex.”

To determine whether or not the foreign nanoparticles disrupted normal brain function, Saha examined the physiological response of olfactory neurons in the locusts before and after the nanoparticle delivery. Several hours after the nanoparticle uptake, no noticeable change in the electrophysiological responses was detected.

“This is only a beginning of a cool set of studies that can be performed to make nanoparticle-based drug delivery approaches more principled,” Raman said.

The next phase of research involves fusing the gold nanoparticles with various medicines, and using ultrasound to target a more precise dose to specific areas of the brain, which would be especially beneficial in brain-tumor cases.

“We want to drug target delivery within the brain using this non-invasive approach,” Raliya said.  “In the case of a brain tumor, we hope to use focused ultrasound so we can guide the particles to collect at that particular point.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Non-invasive aerosol delivery and transport of gold nanoparticles to the brain by Ramesh Raliya, Debajit Saha, Tandeep S. Chadha, Baranidharan Raman, & Pratim Biswas. Scientific Reports 7, Article number: 44718 (2017) doi:10.1038/srep44718 Published online: 16 March 2017

This paper is open access.

I featured another team working on delivering drugs directly to the brain via the olfactory system, except their nanoparticles were gelatin and they were testing stroke medication on rats, in my Sept. 24, 2014 posting.

Nanoparticles for sustainable ways to grow crops

An April 29, 2016 news item on Nanowerk celebrates research into food production,

Scientists are working diligently to prepare for the expected increase in global population — and therefore an increased need for food production— in the coming decades. A team of engineers at Washington University in St. Louis has found a sustainable way to boost the growth of a protein-rich bean by improving the way it absorbs much-needed nutrients.

Ramesh Raliya, a research scientist, and Pratim Biswas, the Lucy & Stanley Lopata Professor and chair of the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering, both in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, discovered a way to reduce the use of fertilizer made from rock phosphorus and still see improvements in the growth of food crops by using zinc oxide nanoparticles.

The food under investigation is the mung bean,

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis hope that nanoparticle technology can help reduce the need for fertilizer, creating a more sustainable way to grow crops such as mung beans. Courtesy: Washington University in St. Louis

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis hope that nanoparticle technology can help reduce the need for fertilizer, creating a more sustainable way to grow crops such as mung beans. Courtesy: Washington University in St. Louis

An April 28, 2016 Washington University in St. Louis  news release (also on EurekAlert) by Beth Miller, which originated the news item, provides more detail,

The research was published April 7 [2016] in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Raliya said this is the first study to show how to mobilize native phosphorus in the soil using zinc oxide nanoparticles over the life cycle of the plant, from seed to harvest.

Food crops need phosphorus to grow, and farmers are using more and more phosphorus-based fertilizer as they increase crops to feed a growing world population. However, the plants can only use about 42 percent of the phosphorus applied to the soil, so the rest runs off into the water streams, where it grows algae that pollutes our water sources. In addition, nearly 82 percent of the world’s phosphorus is used as fertilizer, but it is a limited supply, Raliya says.

“If farmers use the same amount of phosphorus as they’re using now, the world’s supply will be depleted in about 80 years,” Raliya said. “Now is the time for the world to learn how to use phosphorus in a more sustainable manner.”

Raliya and his collaborators, including Jagadish Chandra Tarafdar at the Central Arid Zone Research Institute in Jodhpur, India, created zinc oxide nanoparticles from a fungus around the plant’s root that helps the plant mobilize and take up the nutrients in the soil. Zinc also is an essential nutrient for plants because it interacts with three enzymes that mobilize the complex form of phosphorus in the soil into a form that plants can absorb.

“Due to climate change, the daily temperature and rainfall amounts have changed,” Raliya said. “When they changed, the microflora in the soil are also changed, and once those are depleted, the soil phosphorus can’t mobilize the phosphorus, so the farmer applies more. Our goal is to increase the activity of the enzymes by several-fold, so we can mobilize the native phosphorus several-fold.”

When Raliya and the team applied the zinc nanoparticles to the leaves of the mung bean plant, it increased the uptake of the phosphorus by nearly 11 percent and the activity of the three enzymes by 84 percent to 108 percent. That leads to a lesser need to add phosphorus on the soil, Raliya said.

“When the enzyme activity increases, you don’t need to apply the external phosphorus, because it’s already in the soil, but not in an available form for the plant to uptake,” he said. “When we apply these nanoparticles, it mobilizes the complex form of phosphorus to an available form.”

The mung bean is a legume grown mainly in China, southeast Asia and India, where 60 percent of the population is vegetarian and relies on plant-based protein sources. The bean is adaptable to a variety of climate conditions and is very affordable for people to grow.

Raliya said 45 percent of the worldwide phosphorus use for agriculture takes place in India and China. Much of the phosphorus supply in developing countries is imported from the United States and Morocco-based rock phosphate mines.

“We hope that this method of using zinc oxide nanoparticles can be deployed in developing countries where farmers are using a lot of phosphorus,” Raliya said.

“These countries are dependent on the U.S. to export phosphorus to them, but in the future, the U.S. may have to help supply food, as well. If this crop can grow in a more sustainable manner, it will be helpful for everyone.”

“This is a broader effort under way at the nexus of food, energy and water,” Biswas said. “Nanoparticle technology enabled by aerosol science helps develop innovative solutions to address this global challenge problem that we face today.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Enhancing the Mobilization of Native Phosphorus in the Mung Bean Rhizosphere Using ZnO Nanoparticles Synthesized by Soil Fungi by Ramesh Raliya, Jagadish Chandra Tarafdar, and Pratim Biswas. J. Agric. Food Chem., 2016, 64 (16), pp 3111–3118 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.5b05224 Publication Date (Web): April 07, 2016

Copyright © 2016 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

Tomatoes and some nano-sized nutrients

While zinc is a metal, it’s also a nutrient vital to plants as a Nov. 5, 2015 news item on ScienceDaily notes,

With the world population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, engineers and scientists are looking for ways to meet the increasing demand for food without also increasing the strain on natural resources, such as water and energy — an initiative known as the food-water-energy nexus.

Ramesh Raliya, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher, and Pratim Biswas, PhD, the Lucy & Stanley Lopata Professor and chair of the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering, both at the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, are addressing this issue by using nanoparticles to boost the nutrient content and growth of tomato plants. Taking a clue from their work with solar cells, the team found that by using zinc oxide and titanium dioxide nanoparticles, the tomato plants better absorbed light and minerals, and the fruit had higher antioxidant content.

A Nov. 5, 2015 Washington University in St. Louis news release by Beth Miller (also on EurekAlert but dated Nov. 6, 2015), which originated the news item, describes the work in more detail,

“When a plant grows, it signals the soil that it needs nutrients,” Biswas says. “The nutrient it needs is not in a form that the plant can take right away, so it secretes enzymes, which react with the soil and trigger bacterial microbes to turn the nutrients into a form that the plant can use. We’re trying to aid this pathway by adding nanoparticles.”

Zinc is an essential nutrient for plants, helps other enzymes function properly and is an ingredient in conventional fertilizer. Titanium is not an essential nutrient for plants, Raliya says, but boosts light absorption by increasing chlorophyll content in the leaves and promotes photosynthesis, properties Biswas’ lab discovered while creating solar cells.

The team used a very fine spray using novel aerosolization techniques to directly deposit the nanoparticles on the leaves of the plants for maximum uptake.

“We found that our aerosol technique resulted in much greater uptake of nutrients by the plant in comparison to application of the nanoparticles to soil,” Raliya says. “A plant can only uptake about 20 percent of the nutrients applied through soil, with the remainder either forming stable complexes with soil constituents or being washed away with water, causing runoff. In both of the latter cases, the nutrients are unavailable to plants.”

Overall, plants treated with the nanoparticles via aerosol routes produced nearly 82 percent (by weight) more fruit than untreated plants. In addition, the tomatoes from treated plant showed an increase in lycopene, an antioxidant linked to reduced risk of cancer, heart disease and age-related eye disorders, of between 80 percent and 113 percent.

Previous studies by other researchers have shown that increasing the use of nanotechnology in agriculture in densely populated countries such as India and China has made an impact on reducing malnutrition and child mortality. These tomatoes will help address malnutrition, Raliya says, because they allow people to get more nutrients from tomatoes than those conventionally grown.

In the study, published online last month in the journal Metallomics, the team found that the nanoparticles in the plants and the tomatoes were well below the USDA limit and considerably lower than what is used in conventional fertilizer. However, they still have to be cautious and select the best concentration of nanoparticles to use for maximum benefit, Biswas says.

Raliya and the rest of the team are now working to develop a new formulation of nanonutrients that includes all 17 elements required by plants.

“In 100 years, there will be more cities and less farmland, but we will need more food,” Raliya says. “At the same time, water will be limited because of climate change. We need an efficient methodology and a controlled environment in which plants can grow.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Mechanistic evaluation of translocation and physiological impact of titanium dioxide and zinc oxide nanoparticles on the tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) plant by Ramesh Raliya, Remya Nair, Sanmathi Chavalmane, Wei-Ning Wang and Pratim Biswas. Metallomics, 2015, Advance Article DOI: 10.1039/C5MT00168D First published online 08 Oct 2015

I believe this article is behind a paywall.