Deposition and water repelling of temperature-responsive nanopesticides on leaves

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 14; no. 1; p. 6401
• Main Authors: Tang, Jie, Tong, Xiaojing, Chen, Yongjun, Wu, Yue, Zheng, Zhiyuan, Kayitmazer, A. Basak, Ahmad, Ayyaz, Ramzan, Naveed, Yang, Jintao, Huang, Qingchun, Xu, Yisheng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 12.10.2023; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 14/28; 147/135; 147/143; 631/61/168; 639/166/898; 639/301/54; 706/1143; Acute toxicity; Adhesion; Adhesive strength; Agricultural production; Agrochemicals; Biocompatibility; Contact angle; Copolymers; Deposition; Dispersion; Foliage; Fungicides; Humanities and Social Sciences; Leaves; multidisciplinary; Nanoparticles; Pesticides; Polycaprolactone; Polymers; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Tebuconazole; Zebrafish
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-41878-3

Pesticides are widely used to increase agricultural productivity, however, weak adhesion and deposition lead to low efficient utilization. Herein, we prepare a nanopesticide formulation (tebuconazole nanopesticides) which is leaf-adhesive, and water-dispersed via a rapid nanoparticle precipitation method, flash nanoprecipitation, using temperature-responsive copolymers poly-(2-(dimethylamino)ethylmethylacrylate)- b -poly(ε-caprolactone) as the carrier. Compared with commercial suspensions, the encapsulation by the polymer improves the deposition of TEB, and the contact angle on foliage is lowered by 40.0°. Due to the small size and strong van der Waals interactions, the anti-washing efficiency of TEB NPs is increased by 37% in contrast to commercial ones. Finally, the acute toxicity of TEB NPs to zebrafish shows a more than 25-fold reduction as compared to commercial formulation indicating good biocompatibility of the nanopesticides. This work is expected to enhance pesticide droplet deposition and adhesion, maximize the use of pesticides, tackling one of the application challenges of pesticides. Weak adhesion is a common hindrance to efficient utilization of pesticides in agricultural applications. Here, authors demonstrate leaf-adhesive tebuconazole nanopesticides which can be water-dispersed via flash nanoprecipitation using temperature-responsive copolymers PDMAEMA-b-PCL as the carrier.