Chinese researchers manage to develop some kind of light-responsive herbicide with high efficiency but low cost, which is expected to be with wide applications.

This new herbicide was fabricated by WU Zhengyan and his team in Institute of Technical Biology and Agriculture Engineering, Hefei institutes of physical science.

In their work, the team used a nanocomposite to develop a light-responsively controlled-release herbicide particle (LCHP), which means the release of the herbicide depend on its radiation of UV-Vis.

In recent years, controlled-release pesticides (CRP) has become one of the hot spots in agriculture and environment fields.

Several kinds of CRPs have been fabricated using pH and temperature responsive materials. The release could be efficiently adjusted by pH and temperature to match the demand of crops, however, resulting in a rather high UE.

In fact, there are disadvantages in those available CRPs. PH-responsive CRP might have negative effect on growth of plant attributed to the use of acid or alkaline solution, and temperature-responsive CRP exhibits high energy-consumption and complex operation.

As for the LCHP by WU’s team, it displays excellent light-responsively controlled release performance under the radiation of UV-Vis (365 and 435 nm).

Besides, it possesses a good adhesion performance on surface of weeds leaves in favor of enhancing UE.

And coexisting ions (CO₃^2-, SO₄^2-, and Cl^-) and pH had little impact on LCHP release in water, proving the high stability of this technology.

Thanks to these propertities, LCHP could realize high efficiency but with low-cost. And researchers believe it also could be an environmental-friendly approach to control release of pesticide and enhance the UE.

This research was supported by theNational Natural Science Foundation of China, Youth Innovation Promotion Association of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Science and Technology Service Programs of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Science and Technology Major Project of Anhui Province. (十日内)

Link to the paper: Fabrication of Light-responsively Controlled-release Herbicide Using a Nanocomposite

Schematic illustration of fabrication and mechanism of LCHP. (Image by CHEN Chaowen)

Contact:

ZHOU Shu

Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (http://english.hf.cas.cn/)

Email: zhous@hfcas.ac.cn