Reducing pesticide use: Synthesis and application of ROS-SPC as an efficient nanocarrier and scavenger of reactive oxygen species in plants

Abstract

There is an increasing need to reduce the use of pesticides to reduce their potential threat to food/environmental safety. At the same time, an increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS) induced by abiotic stresses in plants can lead to an increase in ROS in the plant and affect yield. In this paper, ROS-SPC was synthesised by two reactions and used as an efficient pesticide nanocarrier/adjuvant and scavenger of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in plants. By hydrophobic interaction, ROS-SPC spontaneously conjugated to fluazinam with a pesticide loading capacity (PLC) of 15.1 %. After fluazinam was conjugated to ROS-SPC, the particle size of fluazinam was reduced from 64.70 nm reduced to 19.82 nm, and the contact angle of pesticide droplets on plant leaves was significantly reduced from 59.44° to 26.76°. ROS-SPC as a carrier was tested to inhibit phytopathogenic fungi by 200 % more than conventional delivery methods. In addition, we also learned that ROS-SPC with endocytosis capability can indeed remove reactive oxygen species from plants. Tests using HUVEC cells showed that ROS-SPC has low cytotoxicity within a reasonable range of applications, and ROS-SPC was tested to have low toxicity to pollinating bees.