Nanotechnology monitors a leading agricultural controlling process, especially by its miniature dimension. Additionally, many potential benefits such as enhancement of food quality and safety, reduction of agricultural inputs, enrichment of absorbing nanoscale nutrients from the soil, etc. allow the application of nanotechnology to be resonant encumbrance. Agriculture, food, and natural resources are a part of those challenges like sustainability, susceptibility, human health, and healthy life. The ambition of nanomaterials in agriculture is to reduce the amount of spread chemicals, minimize nutrient losses in fertilization and increased yield through pest and nutrient management. Nanotechnology has the prospective to improve the agriculture and food industry with novel nanotools for the controlling of rapid disease diagnostic, enhancing the capacity of plants to absorb nutrients among others. The significant interests of using nanotechnology in agriculture includes specific applications like nanofertilizers and nanopesticides to trail products and nutrients levels to increase the productivity without decontamination of soils, waters, and protection against several insect pest and microbial diseases. Nanotechnology may act as sensors for monitoring soil quality of agricultural field and thus it maintain the health of agricultural plants. This review covers the current challenges of sustainability, food security and climate change that are exploring by the researchers in the area of nanotechnology in the improvement of agriculture.
Silver nanoparticles plays a vital role in the development of new antimicrobial substances against a number of pathogenic microorganisms. These nanoparticles due to their smaller size could be very effective as they can improve the antibacterial activity through lysis of bacterial cell wall. Green synthesis of metal nanoparticles using various plants and plant products has recently been successfully accomplished. However, few studies have investigated the use of industrial waste materials in nanoparticle synthesis. In the present investigation, synthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) was attempted using the aqueous extract of corn leaf waste of Zea mays, which is a waste material from the corn industry. The synthesized AgNPs were evaluated for their antibacterial activity against foodborne pathogenic bacteria (Bacillus cereus ATCC 13061, Listeria monocytogenes ATCC 19115, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 49444, Escherichia coli ATCC 43890, and Salmonella Typhimurium ATCC 43174) along with the study of its synergistic antibacterial activity. The anticandidal activity of AgNPs were evaluated against Candida species (C. albicans KACC 30003 and KACC 30062, C. glabrata KBNO6P00368, C. geochares KACC 30061, and C. saitoana KACC 41238), together with the antioxidant potential. The biosynthesized AgNPs were characterized by UV-Vis spectrophotometry with surface plasmon resonance at 450 nm followed by the analysis using scanning electron microscope, X-ray diffraction, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and thermogravimetric analysis. The AgNPs displayed moderate antibacterial activity (9.26–11.57 mm inhibition zone) against all five foodborne pathogenic bacteria. When AgNPs were mixed with standard antibacterial or anticandidal agent, they displayed strong synergistic antibacterial (10.62–12.80 mm inhibition zones) and anticandidal activity (11.43–14.33 mm inhibition zones). In addition, the AgNPs exhibited strong antioxidant potential. The overall results highlighted the potential use of maize industrial waste materials in the synthesis of AgNPs and their utilization in various applications particularly as antibacterial substance in food packaging, food preservation to protect against various dreadful foodborne pathogenic bacteria together with its biomedical, pharmaceutical based activities.
Nanotechnology is a cutting-edge field of science with the potential to revolutionize today’s technological advances including industrial applications. It is being utilized for the welfare of mankind; but at the same time, the unprecedented use and uncontrolled release of nanomaterials into the environment poses enormous threat to living organisms. Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are used in several industries and its continuous release may hamper many physiological and biochemical processes in the living organisms including autotrophs and heterotrophs. The present review gives a concentric know-how of the effects of AgNPs on the lower and higher autotrophic plants as well as on heterotrophic microbes so as to have better understanding of the differences in effects among these two groups. It also focuses on the mechanism of uptake, translocation, accumulation in the plants and microbes, and resulting toxicity as well as tolerance mechanisms by which these microorganisms are able to survive and reduce the effects of AgNPs. This review differentiates the impact of silver nanoparticles at various levels between autotrophs and heterotrophs and signifies the prevailing tolerance mechanisms. With this background, a comprehensive idea can be made with respect to the influence of AgNPs on lower and higher autotrophic plants together with heterotrophic microbes and new insights can be generated for the researchers to understand the toxicity and tolerance mechanisms of AgNPs in plants and microbes.
Frontiers in Immunology
The Mononuclear Phagocyte System in Infectious Disease