THE  CHALLENGE

The growing indiscriminate use of pesticides and fertilizers has led to substantial environmental pollution, as well as the emergence of additional problems such as agricultural pests, pathogens, and an increasing loss of valuable biodiversity.

Nanotechnology, by virtue of superior properties leveraged by high surface area nanomaterials, has the ability to furnish the agricultural sector with systems to potentiate the effective alleviation of these environmental problems.

THE  TARGET  SOLUTION

NANOARC's Permaculture Division offers nanomineralisation solutions with nontoxic, biocompatible atomically-architectured materials, for the protection of plants against damaging pathogenic infection, subsequent crop damage and economic loss.

Our ECO-R2 product is designed to mitigate damage caused by the aggressive soil-borne, aerobic, non-sporing phytopathogen Ralstonia solanacearum, which causes bacterial wilt in plants around the world.

R. solanacearum affects plants such as coffee, potatoes, tomatoes, olives, peppers, bananas, eggplants, groundnuts, tobacco and ginger. The bacterium R. solanacearum, can survive for up to 40 years at 20–25 °C (68–77 °F) in pure water and infected land sometimes can't be used thereafter for susceptible crops for several years.

R. solanacearum usually enters plants through wounds such as those created by the abscission of flowers, the genesis of lateral roots, agricultural practices, nematodes and xylem-feeding insects. The bacteria can access the wounds by flagellar-mediated swimming motility and chemotaxic attraction toward root exudates.

Unlike most phytopathogenic bacteria, R. solanacearum potentially requires only one entry site, in order to establish a systemic infection, that results in the plant wilting at high bacterial populations in the xylem. The wilting is partially due to vascular dysfunction caused by the bacteria, which prohibits sufficient water from reaching the leaves.

Water is crucial for plant survival and leaves are essential to sustaining overall plant health because they are the primary source or reaction site of photosynthesis and how plants feed themselves.

IMPLEMENTATION

Our ECO-R2 system is provided as a nanopowder, for dispersal in irrigation water at variable doses, depending on the extent of bacterial contamination. The benefits of ECO-R2 are attainable at low doses (approximately 150 - 250 μg/mL or 0.15 to 0.25g per litre), that make the essential active agents in its composition more bioavailable, without negatively affecting the surrounding ecosystem.

Discover our phyto-nanotechnology solutions for implementation in agriculture, environmental remediation, and biomedicine, with the fundamental goal improving crop yields, mitigating pollutants and creating new therapeutic agents against plant pathogens.