Sustainable and Resilient Agriculture through Precision Drug Delivery in Plants

Abstract

There is a pressing need to improve the resilience and sustainability of agriculture in a rapidly changing climate. Foliar application of selected nanoscale amendments is a scalable and desirable approach for this, but we lack methods for efficient foliar uptake. Polymeric nanocarriers can be engineered for efficient uptake and translocation following foliar application. However, the design space for nanocarriers is extensive, and optimizing their design requires better understanding of how the nanocarrier properties affect nanomaterial-plant interactions as these interactions determine how they travel through plants and their ultimate fate. This talk will present different materials for nanocarriers designs and processes for making them, and will highlight what we do know and do not know about the factors influencing their uptake into leaves, mesophyll cells, and phloem, and subsequent distribution to other plant tissues, e.g. roots, stem, younger leaves. Overall, this body of work helping to provide design rules for new materials that can provide precision delivery of agrochemicals to plants.

Bio: Dr. Lowry is the Walter J. Blenko, Sr. Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, and an executive and associate editor of the ACS Journal Environmental Science & Technology. His research area is environmental chemistry, with an emphasis on interactions of nanomaterials at mineral-water and biological-water surfaces. His research aims to improve the efficiency and efficacy of agriculture, environmental remediation and water treatment. Dr. Lowry is a Fellow of the AAAS and AEESP. He has published over 200 scientific articles and is a “highly cited” scientist (top 1%) in the area of ecology and environment. He has received awards for his research from the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists (Science Award), American Society of Civil Engineers (Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Award), and Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (Malcolm Pirnie/AEESP Frontiers in Research Award).