China 丨Jiangnan university developed Chiral nano-pesticide against plant viruses

Recently, in collaboration with Tabacco Research Institute of CAAS, Professor Xu Chuanlai’s team from Jiangnan University developed chiral nanoparticles with unique morphology using minerals required by plant growth process as raw materials, and then developed a new type of nano-pesticide with no residue and no resistance.

Xu introduced that although traditional pesticides play an important role in guaranteeing agricultural production, there are problems such as food pollution and environmental pollution caused by residual pesticides. Therefore, researchers tried new way to reduce the residual problem by developing pesticides based on minerals that plants need to grow.

We chose Tobacco Mosaic virus, which causes great economic losses in agricultural production, as the research object. Based on its structural feature, we created a chiral nanoparticle of Cus. This nanoparticle can enter plant cells through the stomata of plant leaves, and kill viruses by the mechanism of 'Lightcuts' under sunlight.

Xu said they also cooperated with other researchers, such as Yang Jinguang from CAAS and XU Manlin from Shandong Peanut Research Institute, in the field of the real virus infection and spread of the tobacco plants block experiment.

The results show that the new type of pesticide on tobacco Mosaic virus inhibition ability is higher than common plant anti-virus chemical pesticides at present.