JGardea-01
Implications and Applications of Nanotechnologhy in Agriculture
Dr. Jorge Gardea-Torresdey
Environment & Water
Preferred major field of study or minimum required skills
- Analytical chemistry
Scholarly significance/intellectual merit
With a projected global population of 9.7 billion by 2050, agricultural production will need to increase by up to 70%, making achieving global food security among the most significant challenges we face. Further confounding this effort is that the growth in food production will have to occur in the face of a changing climate and on decreasing arable land. Ideally, strategies driving this effort will need to be sustainable, efficiently using water and energy while minimizing negative environmental impacts. One major shortcoming of current agricultural practices is the high inefficiency of agrochemical delivery and utilization, with losses averaging 10-90%. As such, there has been rapidly growing interest in using nanotechnology to address these inefficiencies. Current approaches have focused on nano-enabled conventional agrichemicals, nanosensors, and waste treatment strategies. Nano-enabled agricultural strategies will be incredibly complex and will certainly not be a single “silver” bullet. However, it is clear that efficient, multi-functional strategies to promote food production are needed. In the literature, it is clear that although nanomaterials has been used in agriculture for some time, little is known about their potential used in agriculture.
Research question(s)
- Identify biodegradation rates and nanoparticle (NP) leaching/retention characteristics of different NP-containing biodegradable nanocomposites in different soils.
- Determine the viability of NP-containing biodegradable polymer nanocomposites to enhance growth of different crops while minimizing run off in greenhouse-based plant studies.
- Validate NP-containing biodegradable polymer nanocomposite performance for a range of different crops.
Methods/techniques/instruments to be learned/utilized
The student will be skilled in the design and establishment of experiments under controlled conditions. They will also learn about the operation of several instruments used in science and engineering investigations. For example, the student will be trained in the use of analytical instruments like inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometer (ICP-OES), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), dynamic light scattering (DLS), and other state of the art research instruments.