Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 14
Uptake and Accumulation of Engineered
Nanomaterials and Their Phytotoxicity
to Agricultural Crops
Xingmao Ma and Chunmei Gao
Abstract Rapidly expanding world population and dwindling arable land around
the world demand innovative technologies to drastically enhance the global crop
yield in the near future. The advancement in nanotechnology provides some
possibility to achieve this goal. However, the application of nanomaterial-
containing fertilizers and other agricultural products also carries environmental
and health risks such as the accumulation of nanomaterial residues in edible tissues,
which leads to potential phytotoxicity to agricultural crops and disturbance to the
ecosystem. These environmental and health risks need to be well understood before
the application of nanotechnology in agriculture can be fully embraced. This
chapter presents a summary on the available information concerning the uptake,
transport, and accumulation of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) by agricultural
crops and their potential toxicity to these crops. This chapter also discusses the
modifications of the fate and transport of coexisting environmental chemicals by
ENMs and potential correlations between the unique properties of ENMs with their
fate and impact in agricultural systems to shed light on further beneficial applica-
tions of ENMs in agriculture.
14.1
Introduction
Rapid advancement of nanotechnology provides unprecedented opportunities to
revolutionize many current technologies used for water treatment, environmental
remediation, agriculture, medicine, and manufacturing. In the agricultural industry,
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