Recently, a team led by Prof. WU Zhengyan in Institute of Technical Biology and Agriculture Engineering, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science developed a pH-responsively controlled-release pesticide using attapulgite-based hydrogel. Their work was published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

Pesticides are considered as the most effective way to control weeds, pests, and diseases in modern agriculture for the promotion of grain yield. However, traditional pesticides tend to enter environment easily through runoff, volatilization, and leaching, leading to serious environmental issues and even hazards to human beings.

Consequently, it is urgent to develop new approaches to control the loss as well as improve the utilization efficiency of pesticide.

WU’s team developed a pH-responsively controlled-release chlorpyrifos (PRCRC) via the incorporation of polydopamine-modified attapulgite, calcium alginate, and chlorpyrifos.

PRCRC spheres tend to collapse in weakly alkaline solution and promoted the release of chlorpyrifos, thus display a good pH-responsively controlled release performance, which was proved by the control efficacy test on grubs.

Additionally, the system could effectively protect chlorpyrifos molecules from degradation under ultraviolet light.

Besides, the PRCRC carrier possesses a benign biocompatibility on E. coli and foxtail millet, showing a high biosafety.

Therefore, this work provides a promising approach to improve the utilization efficiency and prolong duration of pesticide, which might have a huge potential application prospect.

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Science and Technology Service Programs of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Link to The paper: Fabrication a pH-responsively controlled-release pesticide using an attapulgite-based hydrogel

Schematic illustration for the fabrication and mechanism of PRCRC. (Image by XIANG Yubin)

Contact:
WU Zhengyan
Institute of Technical Biology and Agriculture Engineering (http://english.itb.cas.cn/)
Email: zywu@ipp.ac.cn