A nanocarrier pesticide delivery system with promising benefits in the case of dinotefuran: strikingly enhanced bioactivity and reduced pesticide residue

Abstract

There is a growing demand for reducing pesticide application to minimize its potential threats to food/environmental safety. Herein, a star polymer (SPc) with low production cost was synthesized using two...

Nanocarrier-Loaded Imidaclothiz Promotes Plant Uptake and Decreases Pesticide Residue

“…As expected, the self-assembly of imidaclothiz/SPc complex could be easily realized through a simple mix and incubation at room temperature for 15 min. The imidaclothiz concentration was proportional to the ultraviolet absorption at 270 nm, and the PLC was calculated to be 16.31% ( Figure S1 ), which was a bit lower than those of dinotefuran (17.41%), osthole (17.09%) and thiamethoxam (20.63%) [ 16 , 17 , 18 ]. The loading efficiency of SPc is comparable to those of other polymer-based nanocarriers [ 35 , 36 ].…”

“…The positive values of ΔH and ΔS demonstrated that the complexation of SPc with imidaclothiz was through hydrophobic association, revealing that the imidaclothiz was assembled in the hydrophobic core of SPc. Based on the current and our previous studies, the SPc can assemble with exogenous agents through different interactions [ 16 , 17 , 18 ], which is beneficial for expanding the application area of SPc.…”

“…It could be concluded that the most of self-aggregated imidaclothiz/SPc complex was composed of stable spherical particles with smaller size compared to imidaclothiz alone. The SPc can be applied as a universal adjuvant for pesticide nanometerization, and it is the first attempt to construct an imidaclothiz nano-delivery system to our knowledge [ 16 , 17 , 18 ]. The smaller particle size of polymer-loaded pesticide is beneficial for not only improving the systematic transmission and plant uptake of pesticide, but also increasing the contact area of pesticide to target pests for enhanced bioactivity [ 38 , 39 , 40 ].…”

“…The degradation rate of imidaclothiz alone was 12.67% and 16.15% on 5 and 7 d, and the SPc-loaded imidaclothiz degraded faster with a degradation rate of 13.77% and 34.89%. These results suggested that the SPc could accelerate the degradation of imidaclothiz, which might be due to the faster biodegradation of nanoscale complex in tobacco plants [ 16 , 18 ]. Therefore, the SPc can be applied as a pesticide adjuvant to decrease the pesticide residue and mitigate the negative impacts on the environment.…”

“…The SPc can activate the clathrin-mediated endocytosis to improve the delivery efficiency of loaded cargo [ 14 , 15 ]. Additionally, the plant-uptake of SPc-loaded pesticides is significantly improved, while the pesticide residue is simultaneously decreased [ 16 , 17 , 18 ]. In a recent publication, the SPc has been successfully applied to co-deliver dsRNA and botanical pesticide to overcome the short life disadvantage of dsRNA and slow-acting property of botanical pesticide for a great enhancement of sequential bioactivity [ 19 ].…”