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As the world’s population continues to rise, agricultural experts wonder how farms will produce enough food to meet demand.
by the American Chemical Society
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One tactic involves increasing crop yields. To that end, scientists have developed a method to make a low-cost, biocompatible fertilizer with carbon points derived from rapeseed pollen. The study, which appeared in ACS Omega , found that applying carbon points to hydroponically grown lettuce promoted its growth by 50 percent.
Equipped with exceptional mechanical, thermal, optical and electrical properties, carbon nanomaterials are commonly associated with complex devices. Surprisingly, these materials could also have potential agricultural applications; some studies have shown that they increase plant growth. The problem with this concept, however, is that many carbon nanomaterials are expensive to produce and generally come with heavy metal contamination. For a safer alternative, Yingliang Liu, Bingfu Lei and their colleagues turned to carbon dots, which previous studies have shown to be biocompatible.
The researchers synthesized carbon dots by breaking up and heating the rapeseed pollen. The high-throughput process was relatively inexpensive, costing 3 cents a gram. Testing of the material as a fertilizer on lettuce showed that at a concentration of 30 milligrams per liter of nutrient solution, the plant biomass was almost 50 percent higher in the treated plants than in those that did not receive the carbon points. Also, because of the carbon. The dots are fluorescent, the researchers were able to trace the materials under ultraviolet light. They saw that the materials were mainly distributed on the sheets. Further analysis also showed that levels of vitamin C and soluble sugars and proteins were not affected.
Read more
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Soilless farming suggested as a solution to Qatar’s food shortage
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