No abstract

According to Food and Agriculture Organization 2015 report, post-harvest agricultural loss accounts for 20-50% annually; on the other hand, reports about preservatives toxicity are also increasing. Hence, preservative release with response to fruit requirement is desired. In this study, acid synthesized in the overripe fruits was envisaged to cleave acid labile hydrazone to release preservative salicylaldehyde from graphene oxide (GO). To maximize loading and to overcome the challenge of GO reduction by hydrazine, two-step activation with ethylenediamine and 4-nitrophenyl chloroformate respectively, are followed. The final composite shows efficient preservative release with the stimuli of the overripe fruit juice and improves the fruit shelf life. The composite shows less toxicity as compared to the free preservative along with the additional scope to reuse. The composite was vacuum-filtered through a 0.4 μm filter paper, to prepare a robust wrapper for the fruit storage.

No abstract

Pesticide leaching and soil contamination are major issues in the present agriculture formulations. Hence, here 2D graphene oxide in combination with cationic, anionic, or nonionic polymers were tested for runoff resistance and targeted release behavior. Cationic polymer supplemented the binding of rGO on leaf surface by 30% more than control and reduced off-target leaching in soil by 45% more than control. Further, to enhance the fruit rot control caused by Colletotrichum capsici in chili crop, the rGO was decorated with Cu2–x Se nanocrystals, which provided combined disease control with captan. The chitosan coating in the nanocomposite added targeted pH-responsive fungal inhibition behavior and could reduce the C. capsici growth by ∼1/2 times compared to captan control.

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.