Nitrogen fertilizers, namely urea, are prone to leaching that causes inefficiency in crop production and environmental pollution; hence porous particles were explored for slow release. Nevertheless, discrete particles add cost; therefore, jute cellulose has been tested as twine to tether silica together for reusability. On the other hand, silica serves as an exoskeleton to give pore memory property to cellulose, which otherwise is susceptible to loss of porosity during irrigation. The composite shows ∼70% more absorption capacity in the fifth cycle than the fiber without silica coating. The urea release kinetics shows only <1/3 and 3/4 of urea release from the jute-silica composite compared to naked porous silica and cellulose, respectively. The slow and sustained release of fertilizer from the composite results in a continuous increase in the chlorophyll content in rice crops.
Crop diseases cause the release of volatiles. Here, the use of an SnO 2 -based chemoresistive sensor for early diagnosis has been attempted. Ionone is one of the signature volatiles released by the enzymatic and nonenzymatic cleavage of carotene at the latent stage of some biotic stresses. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt at sensing volatiles with multiple oxidation sites, i.e., ionone (4 oxidation sites), from the phytovolatile library, to derive stronger signals at minimum concentrations. Further, the sensitivity was enhanced on an interdigitated electrode by the addition of platinum as the dopant for a favorable space charge layer and for surface island formation for reactive interface sites. The mechanistic influence of oxygen vacancy formation was studied through detailed density functional theory (DFT) calculations and reactive oxygen-assisted enhanced binding through X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis.
Lycopene, a natural colorant and
antioxidant with a huge growing
market, is highly susceptible to photo/thermal degradation, which
demands real-time sensors. Hence, here a transparent upconversion
nanoparticles (UCNPs) strip having 30 mol % Yb, 0.1 mol % Tm, and
β-NaYF4 UCNPs, which shows an intense
emission at 475 nm, has been developed. This strip has been found
to be sensitive to lycopene with a detection limit as low as 10 nM
using a smartphone camera, which is due to static quenching that is
confirmed by the lifetime study. In comparison to previous paper strips,
here the transparent strip has minimal scattering with maximum sensitivity
in spite of not using any metal quenchers. An increase in strip hydrophobicity
during the fabrication process complements the strip to selectively
permeate and present an extraction-free substitute analysis for chromatography.
Hydrophobicity endows the strip with the capability to reuse the strip
with ∼100% luminescence recovery.
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