Effects of Nanomaterial Overdose in Plant Nutrition

The advent of nanotechnology has led to new achievements in the different fields of science and technology. The minified size of materials under this technology discloses certain novel or hitherto ignored features and properties of these materials. It is true that nanotechnology has helped enhance certain features of fertilizers as evidenced by a number of studies reporting their positive effects on different plants. However, it should be noted that most of these studies were performed under laboratory conditions and considered only short periods of plant life, in many cases only up to germination. This is while there are many reports showing the adverse consequences of using nano-materials. For example, nanoparticles of aluminum, iron, zinc, titanium, nickel, and silver or hydroxyapatite nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes have caused reduced growth in onions, vetch, rye, rice, beans, corn, cucumber, sorghum, and tomato plants. These inconsistent reports call for exhaustive investigations to determine the interactions between nano-materials and plants and their final fate in the plant and food chain before they can be used as fertilizers. Since plants stand at the beginning of the food chain, introduction and accumulation of nano-materials inside them might help transfer these materials to higher levels of the chain to end up in the human body. This paper studies the effects of high concentrations of nano-materials on plant growth in certain species, the associated damages, and the uptake and accumulation of nanoparticles in plant.